See my previous posts for a recap of our adventures in London and York.

On Friday morning, we got up and caught a train from York to Edinburgh. We traveled through some beautiful country along the east coast of England and Scotland. We arrived after lunch and checked into our hotel. While we were in the room, passing bands of sleet and sun kept happening outside. It would be sunny, then it would sleet for five minutes, then it would be sunny again. It was bizarre.

Our hotel room had an amazing view of Edinburgh Castle:

View of Edinburgh Castle from Our Hotel

By the time we left the hotel room, the sun was winning the battle. We decided to go ahead and see Edinburgh Castle while the weather held. My legs, still sore from the York Minster climb, did not appreciate the fact that the castle was much higher than our starting location. Even though the walk wasn’t that far (maybe a half mile), it was quite steep. Then, once we got there, we were faced with more stairs. Yay.

The castle was small, but drenched in history. It included a chapel that was built in the 12th century. Someone back in the 1100s stood in the same location I was now standing and worked on the building. That is crazy.

The Scottish Crown Jewels are stored in Edinburgh Castle so we went to see those when the rain started. Of everywhere we visited, Scotland had the most unpredictable weather. By the time we were done inside the buildings, the sun was out again. Mostly. It’s good we both bought waterproof jackets before our trip.

Saturday morning we got up early for our bus tour of the Highlands. The tour left at 8:00 AM and didn’t return until 8:30 PM, so it was a long day.

The scenery in Scotland is amazing. Our tour guide said it had snowed a few days before, so all of the mountaintops were covered in white. We ended up driving diagonally across Scotland from the Atlantic Ocean to the North Sea:

Tour Route

According to our tour guide, 95% of the land in the Highlands is owned by just 100 people. People who live in the villages actually lease the land their house is built on instead of owning it outright, even though they pay for and own the building. It seems like an odd system.

One of the most beautiful parts of the drive was the road through Glen Coe. It wound through mountains and valleys full of awesome scenery.

The Three Sisters of Glen Coe

After lunch we made it to Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle. The castle was a ruin, but a picturesque one, perched as it is on the side of Loch Ness. We explored the castle for a couple hours, then had a boat trip on Loch Ness. We did not see Nessie. I tried to get Dustin to jump into the lake to create a fake Nessie video, but he wouldn’t. I don’t know why. :)

Urquhart Castle and Loch Ness

Loch Ness is so big and so deep that it contains more freshwater than all of the lakes in England and Wales combined. Our guide said that if it never rained in Scotland again (unlikely, I think), they would be able to use their existing lakes as a water supply for sixty-five years.

On Sunday we explored the Royal Mile, the road between Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace that is just over a mile long. It’s filled with tourists shops and pubs now, but the architecture is amazing. Edinburgh is probably my favorite city of the trip, because it just feels old–in a good way. London is old, but it’s also a big, bustling, modern city. Edinburgh, at least the part we visited, still manages to feel quaint, like a hidden treasure.

The walk from Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood Palace is all downhill and at a fairly steep angle. So the walk down to the palace was awesome, and the walk back to our hotel kind of sucked.

Holyrood Palace is where the Queen stays when she visits Scotland. It is open to the public when she is not in residence, and it’s decorated like most royal houses–ostentatiously. It’s fairly small as palaces go, but it was interesting to get a peek inside.

Holyrood Palace Entrance

We also briefly visited the National Museum of Scotland. We thought we had seen most of the museum in a couple hours, but it turns out we only saw a small part of it. The building is actually quite a lot bigger than we thought.

Monday was our last full day, because our flight out was early Tuesday morning. We decided to get up and have a picnic on Arthur’s Seat, a small hill/mountain near Holyrood Palace. We figured it would be similar to climbing Enchanted Rock here in TX. We were both right and wrong.

The trail is clearly marked so it’s easy to see where you are going. However, the vertical rise is nearly 700 feet from the start of the trail (RunKeeper said we climbed 675 feet in about a mile). Enchanted rock is only about 425 feet of rise, so it’s not really on the same scale.

Once we got close to the top, with much huffing and puffing on my part, our beautiful, sunny day turned into a sleet storm. Complete with howling wind that was blowing hard enough that it had to be leaned into to prevent it from knocking you over. We were wearing our raincoats, so we fastened them up and cinched down the hoods and stood with our backs to the wind. It was insane. Dustin claimed that we were “real mountain-climbers now.”

Luckily the sleet passed just as fast, and the sun returned. I’ll reiterate–Scotland has the weirdest weather. We climbed all the way to the top and had an amazing view of Edinburgh and the North Sea.

Us on Arthur’s Seat

Because the wind was still pretty violent, we climbed down a little ways before eating our picnic lunch. The sun stayed out the whole time and it was completely gorgeous.

The walk down was waaayyy easier than the walk up. Unfortunately, we were still at the bottom of the Royal Mile, so we had to walk back up to our hotel. But after the mountain, that walk didn’t seem so bad.

We ended up taking a nap (okay, I took a nap while Dustin read a book) on Monday afternoon. After three weeks of travel, we decided it was time for a break.

On Tuesday we woke up at the ridiculous time of 5:15 AM. We had to catch a bus to the airport, so we didn’t want to be late. We weren’t. Turns out they don’t even tell you the gate number until thirty minutes before boarding or so.

We had a short flight from Edinburgh to London. It was like flying from Austin to Dallas, except British Airways served us a free, hot breakfast in that time. It was awesome. They completely won me over with a single meal.

I read for most of the flight from London to Chicago. I think I finished two books. The flight was uneventful, which is always good. When we arrived in Chicago, we had to go through customs and border protection. There was a line to get in the line. It took us over an hour to get through customs.

Luckily (I guess), our next flight was delayed by over an hour, so we managed to catch it. If it had left on time, we would’ve missed it by quite a bit. I dozed for maybe half an hour on the flight to Austin. I just couldn’t keep my eyes open any more.

Once we landed and got home, it was around 10:00 PM. I unpacked my bag, did two loads of laundry, and repacked my bag to leave again the next day for the RT convention. Except for the short nap on the plane, I was up for 25 hours straight. Needless to say, I collapsed Tuesday night and slept like the dead.

Stay tuned for the RT convention recap…

For a recap of our adventures in London, see my previous post.

On Thursday morning we checked out of our London hotel and began our “real” vacation. Dustin took a few days off work so we’d have plenty of time to sightsee. We took a 2.5 hour train ride to York, which is midway between London and Edinburgh.

We arrived in York in the early afternoon and checked into our hotel. The hotel was a large converted house and it was really neat. We were on the top floor, which was up three steep flights of stairs, but the room was super nice, so all was forgiven.

Our main reason to visit York was to see York Minster, the largest Gothic church in the UK and the second largest in Northern Europe. It also has one of the largest collections of medieval stained glass in the world.

We paid to see the church and to climb the main tower. I figured I had conquered St. Paul’s dome, so this would be a breeze. I was wrong. So very, very wrong.

The climb is 230 feet up 275 stairs. The spiral stairway is quite narrow, and once again it is one-way only. Once you start, you are committed. There are no landings and no place to stop and rest (except on the stairs themselves, blocking the people behind you). About halfway up, you transfer from the outer tower to the main tower. Outside. On a walkway along the roof that is about two feet wide.

York Minster Walkway from the Ground

Us on the York Minster Walkway

After the walkway of doom, the climb gets even narrower and steeper, if that’s possible. There is still no place to stop, and I had to stop on the stairs several times to catch my breath. Just when you think the stairway may go on to infinity, you reach the top. And you see this:

View from York Minster

The pain is forgotten because the view is amazing. We had decent weather. It wasn’t super sunny, but it wasn’t actively raining, so I’m going to count that as a win.

You are allowed to wander around a take pictures for a while, but then it’s back down so the next tour can begin the climb–there is a single shared stairway.

York Minster Tower Stairs – I’m happy because I’m descending.

The interior of the church is awesome. It’s hard to imagine that it was built hundreds of years ago.

York Minster Interior

That evening, we attended a sung Evensong service in the quire (yes, it is spelled like that). Because it was a Saint’s day, it was slightly more formal with the swinging incense and the whole bit. The service was fairly short–about forty-five minutes. The choir sang most of it, with a few very short spoken prayers and teachings. Even though I’m not Anglican, I thought it was lovely.

York Minster Quire

On Friday morning, we got up and caught a train to Edinburgh. Stay tuned for my next post about our adventures in Scotland…

It took us a couple hours to find the perfect flight to London. We wanted to fly American (for the miles and the low price), without actually flying American (because they kind of suck). British Airways is a One-World partner. Sadly, most “British Airways” flights to London are operated by American. But our persistence paid off, and we had the perfect round-trip flight.

Therefore, it was with a great deal of sadness that we discovered our flight to Chicago was already delayed due to “weather” when we arrived at the airport two hours early. After some frantic rebooking by the ticket agent, we would be flying out of Dallas, thankfully still on a British Airways flight.

Side note: British Airways kicks ass.

We tried to sleep, but the most we could manage was a couple hours of dozing. It’s hard to sleep at 35,000 feet with 400 of your closest friends jammed around you.

We figured out the Underground and made it to the hotel with a minimum of getting lost. Some nice gentleman did point us in the right direction when we were standing around looking confused.

Dustin worked for two days then we had our first sightseeing weekend. We spent the entire day, from open to close (almost seven hours) at the British Museum. Since the British Empire spanned the globe, they managed to collect artifacts from around the world. I think they may have more Egyptian artifacts than Egypt does.

The Rosetta Stone

Saturday night, we ate at the Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, a pub that was rebuilt in 1667. The pub has been in business longer than the U.S. has been a country.

On Sunday, we went to Kew Gardens and Hampton Court Palace. Kew Garden was beautiful. We had perfect weather to spend a day outside. There were these amazing glass greenhouses that were built in the 1840s with wrought iron and hand-blown glass panels.

Glass Greenhouse

Hampton Court Palace was everything you’d expect from a former royal residence: huge, extravagant, and ornate. In short, it was awesome. We spent several hours wandering around gawking at the sheer amount of wealth it would’ve taken to build such a building. We also successfully completed the hedge maze, which was built in 1690 and is still surviving.

Hampton Court Palace Courtyard

Dustin went back to work for a week, then we had our second sightseeing weekend. On Saturday, we visited Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and St. Paul’s Cathedral. Both churches were completely awe-inspiring. Neither allowed pictures inside, so I couldn’t capture the magic to share.

Us at Big Ben and Parliament

At St. Paul’s, we climbed to the middle level of the dome. The first level is open to the inside (and completely terrifying because you can see the floor 90 feet down as well as the top of the dome when you look up). The first level is 257 fairly easy steps up. It’s a nice wide spiral staircase and the steps are short, making the ascent easier.

The next level requires another 119 steps and these are much less fun. It is still a spiral staircase, but it is so small they made the passage one-way (once you start, you can’t back out). It’s narrow and the stairs are steep, but every so often there is a landing with a bench carved into the wall, so it’s possible to stop and rest.

Once you reach the second level, you are outside with an amazing view of London. Even if you are scared of heights (like me!) it is worth the climb. We stopped at the second level, but you could continue on to the third level. Our guidebook said if you are claustrophobic it might not be a good idea, though, so I decided I had faced my fears as much as I was going to for one day and skipped it.

View from St. Paul’s

On Sunday we visited the Tower of London. The London Marathon course ran right past the Tower and there were tons and tons of spectators. We got there in time to see some of the elite men run past the ~20 mile mark.

The tower famously holds the Crown Jewels, though no photography is allowed inside. The jewels are pretty much what you’d expect–completely, ridiculously, over-the-top. There are so many diamonds and other gems that it all begins to look like glass, because no one could really have that many diamonds, right? Wrong, apparently.

Us at the Tower of London and Tower Bridge

On Monday, when Dustin had to go back to work, I did some exploring on my own. The Queen’s birthday was on Sunday, so in belated celebration they did on gun salute on Monday. It was awesome. There was a marching band. They played the Indiana Jones music and the Death March from Star Wars (no one can say they don’t have a sense of humor). There were six teams of horses pulling cannons and they ran in at a very fast clip. I expected sedate horses, but I think they found only the crazy, high-strung ones.

They shot off 41 rounds (a 21-round standard salute, plus an extra 20 rounds because it was in a royal park… I have no idea why that matters). Note: cannons are loud. I took a video and you can see me jump and squeak when the first shot went off.

Gun Salute

On Tuesday night, right before our Underground passes ran out, we had beautiful, warm weather. We decided a picnic in the Hyde Park was required. It was perfect. We walked around the lake as the sun set. Fun fact: Hyde Park has sandy horse-riding trails, though I didn’t see any horses.

The Serpentine at Sunset

Overall, we had an amazing time in London. Stay tuned for my recap of our time in York and Scotland…