Braveheart

This post is complete with educational links to wikipedia, in case you want to edumacate yourself about Scottish history. You're welcome.

Out of the blue, some friends asked me if I wanted to take a trip to Stirling on Saturday. It's only about 30 minutes by train from Glasgow, so I figured why not?

We left Saturday morning and arrived in Stirling to relatively sunny skies and pretty warm temperatures. Stirling is a lot smaller than Glasgow, and is a lot less crowded. This is one of the first things we saw upon arrival:


There are two main tourist attractions in Stirling: the William Wallace monument and Stirling Castle (on top of the hill in the photo above). Unfortunately, they are on opposite ends of Stirling. Fortunately, Stirling is small so this means they're only about a 20 minute walk from each other.

Since the William Wallace monument was pretty much the reason we had decided to go to Stirling, we chose to visit that one first. For those of you who don't know who William Wallace was, he's the guy Mel Gibson plays in Braveheart. Very cool guy, did lots of fighting and stuff.


The William Wallace monument is on a hill overlooking the city of Stirling. In order to get there from the train station, you have to cross the River Forth (I think that's the one, I could be wrong...), walk through a residential area, and then climb a HUGE hill. Upon reaching the top of said hill, you arrive at the parking lot for the monument. There's a bus service from here to the monument itself, but being healthy women we decided to go up on foot. The climb from here isn't too terrible, though it's pretty steep and the trail snakes back and forth around the back of the mountain. Looking at it as we were still in the residential area, it seemed like we would never make it up. But honestly it wasn't so bad. A bit out of breath, we made it to the top. Up here, we could see the whole city of Stirling and its surroundings. The Scottish countryside is fully evident from a point this high, and there are a series of majestic hills in view, too. Directly across the city, you can see Stirling castle sitting on its own little hill.

It is very, very windy on the top of the William Wallace monument. We didn't actually go IN the monument itself. It's kind of like the Washington Monument or Bunker Hill in Boston, tall and lots of stairs inside, but there's no real reason to go in when it costs £5. The point really is the view:


We ate our sandwiches atop the hill, and then headed back down toward the castle. On the way, we crossed over the old footbridge where the Battle of Stirling Bridge was fought (William Wallace took part, which you can see immortalized in Braveheart). It's a really pretty bridge, so we stopped to take some photos (obv).


Stirling Castle is a hop skip and a jump from Stirling Bridge, and of course is upon another pretty steep hill. We climbed up, met a kitty on the way (feral? ew), and then arrived outside the castle. There's a pretty nice monument there to Robert the Bruce which I particularly liked because they carved him a curly beard.


We DID pay to go inside Stirling Castle, because from the outside you can't really see much. Plus Stirling Castle is kind of a big deal. Fortunately, though there was no student price, there WAS a free tour that started just as we entered the castle gates. Our lovely tourguide, Brian, was a cheerful Scotsman who took us around, telling us all about the castle, those who lived in it, and why it's haunted (which is a pretty cool story, about the king murdering some earl that he thought was gaining too much power and plotting to overthrow him. He invited him over for dinner, then stabbed him like 26 times, and pushed him off the roof. BAMF). I'm always impressed at how knowledgeable tour guides are.


One of the coolest things I learned while at Stirling Castle was that the whole thing used to be painted a sort of yellow-creme color, and all the little figures carved into the stone were painted blues and greens and reds and golds. It's funny to think about, because the castle seems so dreary (and fitting to the Scottish countryside!) in its gray stone. I honestly never thought about how magnificent the castles must've been in their heydays, but apparently Stirling looked something like this:


Anyway, we traveled around Stirling castle, and saw lots of castle-y sights. The castle is famous because it was the Stuart's favorite one in Scotland. Pretty cool.

Here's a view of the William Wallace monument from Stirling Castle (it's the very small, slightly phallic brown-gray structure in the distance):


By this point, the lovely weather had faded considerably, and it was getting pretty cold. We stopped into a pub where some local guy was playing acoustic guitar and singing, surrounded by an audience of adoring girls wearing bright colors and ridiculous makeup (but who am I to judge, eh?). We sat here for a little while, warming up, and then two girls decided they wanted to get some dinner. We traveled from this pub to a restaurant place that was obviously supposed to be American-style. It came off as much less friendly than the pubs we've gotten used to. Stirling is a touristy town because of the castle and the monument, so prices are rather higher than they are in Glasgow. After they ate, we decided to catch the train home. All in all, it was a really fun day trip.

Each time I go to a new city in Scotland, a part of me is worried that I'll fall in love with it even more than I have with Glasgow, and wish I'd gone there instead. Luckily, that hasn't really happened yet! Glasgow may be a little rougher around the edges than these more tourist-based towns, but it's certainly got a lot more character, too.

Left Side/Right Side

I've gotten the hang of which side of the road the cars drive on. Nonetheless, when I'm crossing I always look the UK direction and then glance in the US direction (just in case there are any crazy foreigners lurking about).

Also, I can't accept that they drive on the right side of the car. I can't tell you how many times I've looked up and thought a baby/dog/sleeping person was in the driver's seat.

I'll be in Scotland afore ye

This weekend, I got to go to the Highlands with the International Student Society. On the way, we stopped in Luss, a small town that sits on the bonnie bonnie banks of Loch Lomond! It was quite cold, but really beautiful. This photo shows a view from said bonnie bonnie banks. The snow capped monstrosity in the background is Ben Lomond. And that tugboat is precious, no?


After spending some time on the banks, we headed around to see what Luss had to offer. The answer is not much. The houses are all tiny and made of stone. Very cute. There was a stream and the water was so clear. It was insane. Most of the water in the Highlands comes from streams like this, I've heard. I felt a lot better drinking from the tap once I saw that clear stream (though I suppose the water in Glasgow is probably really really nasty because it's such an industrial city. Don't burst my bubble!). Anyway, there was a bridge over the stream, which lead us into a large field. There was pretty much nothing in the field except an enormous celtic cross covered in various symbols for peace...


...and a large petrified tree. I really liked the cross. It had all these pieces of colored glass in it that caught the sunlight just right.

From Loch Lomond, we got back on the bus and traveled to the infamous Loch Ness, specifically a town called Fort Augustus. Here's a view of Loch Ness (sans Nessie, unfortunately):


And another:


Loch Ness is 22 miles long and only about a mile wide at its largest, so it's no surprise that they dropped us off where Nessie vacations in the summer, rather than where she lives for the rest of the year. Oh well, means I'll have to go back someday. Preferably at dusk, because that seems conducive to seeing water monsters.

A view of the Loch from a bridge in Fort Augustus:


Anyway, Fort Augustus was cute, but not in the same way as Luss. It was a little more touristy, and a lot colder and snowier. We were getting higher into the Highlands, so I suppose that was to be expected. But I felt like I was in Okemo or some other skiing town in Vermont rather than truly at THE Loch Ness. I think I prefered Loch Lomond. It was great fun teaching my Australian friend the Loch Lomond song on the bus. People kept debating what the true words were. That song is one of the only things I can say with a Scottish (man) accent. No clue why.

But all that aside, we climbed back onto the bus and drove for a bazillion hours up into the Highlands. We stayed at a youth hostel in Carbisdale castle. They had promised us a 3 course gourmet dinner and a ceilidh, so I had high hopes. Unfortunately, aforementioned dinner was more like a cafeteria-style meal (I had mac & cheese--at least they had a veggie option!) and the ceilidh band was super late because they got stuck in bad weather on the way up, and then had to leave in less than an hour because they were all SO YOUNG. We're talking fetuses here, people. Very strange.

We lucked out in rooms, because we had a group of 10 and there was one room for 10 people. So we had a room all to ourselves, in a beautiful castle, and very little else mattered. Since it was all international students, I knew a lot of people on the trip already and got to meet more. It's nice to be in a group of people who are all kind of feeling the same excitement about being in Scotland and doing things like visiting Lochs and castles.

The next morning we got up and took some photos of the castle, then ate a HUGE breakfast (mostly because we kept going back for more, not because it was all that delicious) and then packed back into the bus for a VERY VERY long busride home.



They promised us a lunchtime stop in Inverness, the biggest city in the Highlands. I was really looking forward to having an hour or so to explore, but they only gave us 45 minutes and dropped us off in the parking lot of a supermarket. Excellent. Guess Inverness is still on my list of places to visit. By the time we got back to Glasgow, it was very snowy, so I suppose they were smart to beat the weather. All in all it was a good couple of days and I feel like I've seen a ton of the countryside now. It's funny to drive through Scotland, because it's such a small country but it has a LOT of different types of landscape. We honestly drove through about four different climates on our way up there. Parts of it look just like Vermont in the winter, except bigger (which is funny, because I doubt Scotland is bigger than many things OTHER than Vermont!), and parts looked like some springtime lakeside place in Pennsylvania or something. Very strange.

Tomorrow I will be 5 weeks in to my stay in Glasgow, leaving only 15 weeks left. I can't believe the time is going so quickly! There's a lot left for me to do, and I've got to start thinking about my classwork, too. I've got an essay due every week from now until mid March, it appears. Oh well. I just hope I can remember to spell things correctly (i.e. labour; industrialisation; centre)!

Also, a very happy birthday to my lovely mother. Hope everyone back home made it great!

Empty Orchestra

I can't get over the weather here. It's been really quite warm, considering how cold it is in the US these days, and I think I'm getting soft! One of the security guards at the complex where I live told us on one of our first days here that February is the coldest month in Glasgow. And wouldn't you know it, it started snowing last night and hasn't stopped yet! First 'real' snow we've had, other than the occasional flurry (a very wet flurry, because it's so humid!). I must say, if this is as cold as it gets...HAHA to everyone freezing their bums off back in the Northeast US!

Maybe Glaswegian weather is nice because it's so predictably awful. In fact, the only few days it's been sunny so far are those days that we've gone out and taken photos of the city! So we've been pretty lucky.

This is an interesting time to be gone, because so many distinctly American things have happened while I've been here: the inauguration and the Super Bowl, I mean (I guess that doesn't count as SO many, but whatever). I suppose going in the fall and experiencing Halloween and Thanksgiving in a non-American country would've been similarly strange (or at least, waking up on those days and realizing it's not a holiday would be). However, both the inauguration and the Super Bowl have gotten a bit of hype around here. I've spoken a little about the inauguration, which was fun; but the Super Bowl was even more of an experience. First of all, as I make more local friends it gets more apparent how different the cultures actually are! Last night, we all went to a pub/bar/nightclub place to watch the game. It was probably the first time I've watched a football game and been one of the most knowledgeable about what was happening! Not that I really had any clue, but it was less embarrassing not to know and more gratifying when I did know the answers to questions posed by people seeing American Football for the first time. The only downside was that we don't get American commercials, so I didn't get that particular bit of enjoyment. Also, commercials in the UK don't last as long, so there were several instances where we were watching them mill around on the field while the commercials in America played. It was interesting to see the illusion of "continuous play" shattered like that. I knew that they suspended play during commercials in the Super Bowl, I just never really thought about it much. (Note: I typed this paragraph and then re-read it, and I spelled commercials wrong EVERY TIME. Oops.)

One of the best parts about last night was that my friends convinced me it would be a good idea to sing karaoke while we were waiting for kick off (which happened at just after 11 pm--needless to say I did not stay for the whole game, especially since my flat was a 50 minute walk away!). Now, I've never been a shy performer, but karaoke has never really been something I thought about doing. So, we made a deal: I would sing if they would come up on stage and dance. It was a really fun time. Two of my friends took a video, so maybe I'll put that up here (once I've watched it myself, to make sure it's not TOO embarrassing). You'll just have to keep checking back to see!

Alright, time to walk to class in the snow. It makes campus feel oddly familiar, somehow...