Made it late but safe and sound back to St. Louis and this time so did my baggage! With all the rainfall last week there’s apparently been a recent installment of a waterfall at the gate area, so we had to deplane on the tarmac and take a bus to the baggage carousels, but that just adds the cherry on top to what a mess traveling for this trip has been.
It had been a couple days since my luggage was supposed to land in Edinburgh, so one of our ISS staff was able to take me to a warehouse by the airport where all the late luggage was sitting waiting to be delivered. Sure enough, mine was there – and I think there was a lot of Air Canada bags there because when I told them what airline I was with he said, “Oh yeah, I know exactly where that pile is.” Crazy that it took this long, but I’m glad I was able to get it back before leaving again. That evening we did the Darn Walk into the city for some ice cream.
Finally got to get out and experience the real Scottish weather – went back to Alva to hike through the Alva Glen. My maps steered me wrong again but this time it was 100% worth it because I got to frolic through a field fo sheep and actually made it to my final destination eventually (Smuggler’s Cove). Ended the night going into town for a karaoke night and learned that “Country Roads” is as much if not more popular in the UK.
Day trip to St. Andrews; luckily we missed the chaos of the big open last week, but there were still some tents set up in a field and you could see the patches of grass where the other hundred tents were. I had an amazing strawberry tart (and hot chocolate) for breakfast; we mostly just walked around shopping and wandering on the beach since none of us could really care less about golf (though literally every other store was a golf store). I did almost have to throw hands with a seagull as it swooped down to get my crumbs as I went to the trash can – I literally almost punched it in the beak before it would leave me alone.
This morning we started on our weekend tour to the Isle of Skye; when we started off we were finally getting some of the classic Scottish rain, but it cleared up as we went north so we could see all the mountains and lochs lining the roads. I definitely don’t remember all the names of the mountains we stopped at, but I do know that on the way we drove through the Loch Lommond & Trossachs National Park, and Glenco, and saw the Three Sisters, Glenfinnan Viaduct (Harry Potter bridge), and Eileen Donan Castle. Oh, and I finally saw my Highland cows! We stayed at a hostel in Stromeferry; pretty janky – we could only have power on either the first or second floor and (spoiler  alert) the second night the showers stopped working all together, but you get what you pay for and we were pretty much only there to sleep.
Went out to Doune Castle, where it seems that its Monty Python fame has now been overshadowed by Outlander. Continued up into Callander, at the edge of the Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park where I hiked to Bracklinn Falls. I tried stopping by Samson’s Stone while I was there, but I took two different  trails, and each time my GPS told me to turn there was only dense forest; even when I found an official park map there was only a dot surrounded by green and no trails so I’m not sure how to get there without a helicopter. It was a beautiful day to waste a couple hours in the forest though, I was led to believe it’d be raining pretty much everyday here but the weather’s been absolutely smashing all week.
Well, my luggage didn’t make it, but I have arrived to Stirling. I’ve started to meet all the other international students, and a couple of us wandered up to the William Wallace Monument – which is just a 20 min walk from campus; the inside wasn’t open but there’s lots of different trails around the base.
So we went to Gellert Hill and went in the church that is inside the hill (for the rest of the day’s activities and pictures of the church search “History in Budapest”). I wanted to climb up to the cross (which at the time I forgot was pretty much directly above the church/cave opening). I assumed I would just be able to follow a path up but I was sorely mistaken; a couple feet into the trek up the hill, the path split in multiple directions and all the way up there were many different paths you could take and they were all paved so there was not one correct one – I saw one sign, but it was in Hungarian so not very helpful. I figured “up” was a pretty safe direction so I just continued that way exploring some of the different paths. I got to one intersection and was standing there deciding which way to go (and catching my breath), but was about to go the wrong way when a Hungarian woman told me that there were good views the other way, so I assumed I had finally made it to the cross. I again was sorely mistaken. I had accidentally climbed all the way to the top of the large hill to Budapest’s Statue of Liberty – not what I was expecting, but the views were absolutely fantastic. On the hike up there I only saw like 4 other people, but at the top there were many other tourists coming from all different paths all around the hill, so I assume any of the separate paths I could have taken would have eventually gotten me to the same place. But alas, even with the very rewarding views I had not accomplished what I had set out to do and visit the cross. I looked at some pictures I had taken before we started up the hill and then realized how far away I actually was and started wandering back down on different paths and eventually found my way to the cross. It was a fun detour and added adventure to the day, plus I think it’s a funny story.
We had a couple of delays with our flight getting to Dallas yesterday, but our flight to Amsterdam also got slightly delayed so we were able to still make it to Amsterdam mostly on time. We were successful with our first Amsterdam adventure: navigating the train station and getting to our hotel, which has an amazing view of the city. After a quick nap to recharge, we explored Amsterdam with a Hop-On-Hop-Off boat tour on the canals. Amsterdam has about the same amount of water as Venice, but far less bridges.
We had a lot of time to waste before our flight at 8, so we stopped by another waterfall and saw Independence Day: Resurgence (which was better than I thought it was going to be). Our already late flight got delayed an hour so that was a bummer.
