A Few Weekend Trips

A few weekends ago, my roommate, one of our friends and I took a day trip to Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland. Glasgow is only an hour away on a train, and a round trip ticket is pretty cheap – about £12. Many of the Glaswegians I’ve met seem to go home often, and apparently there’s some people who make the Edinburgh-Glasgow commute every day for work.
So, needless to say, its quite an easy trip to a different but still really great other city. Yay for good public transportation!

We were probably only there for about 6 hours so we didn’t get much in, but I definitely plan on going back (this time, with some of my friends who are from Glasgow). First we went to the Glasgow Cathedral, which is 800 years old and is one of the oldest and best preserved cathedrals in Scotland. I’m not usually super enthused by things like old cathedrals, but I was happy to spend the 1 hour+ that we did just looking around. There was the big upstairs kind of typical area, but then there were some stair that led down into a few other rooms that had completely different and surprising interiors. (Its mostly the stark white room that was surprising; it’s quite the contrast to the very dark, cave-like feel that the rest had.)

Then behind the cathedral was a huge necropolis that we spent at least another hour at. (For those that don’t know, “necropolis” literally means dead city… aka a fancy graveyard.) I had never seen anything like it. I mean, I have seen big graveyards before, and very elaborate tombstones, but this had thousands of insanely elaborate tombs. All of these were on a hill, but at the bottom around the back there were thousands more of your average tombstones.

Then we got some of the best curry I’ve had at some random place and headed off to the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery. This place was pretty cool because it covered a huge spectrum of things, all put into themed rooms. The coolest room was definitely the “Expression” room, where they had about a hundred white heads hanging from the ceiling with different facial expressions.

But last weekend, I embarked on a much more exciting trip. This trip was another event hosted by the IFSA-Butler study abroad program, and so everything was already included in the initial fee for the semester.

The weekend was spent in the Argyll Forest, which is pretty much just straight west from Edinburgh, but we did have to cross a sort of river (its long and skinny, but really its more like a gulf) on a ferry. The place we stayed at was this castle-looking hostel that was originally a wealthy family’s summer home but at some point turned into an outdoor training center, and then later into a hostel (with all of the remnants of an outdoor center).

The hostel

After arriving and having dinner on Friday, we went on a night hike. There were a few options of different kinds of hikes to do, and I chose to do the one that was supposed to be the most physical and muddy. We got dressed up in waterproof pants and wellies (rainboots) that they provided for us, and then got in groups and were led out by one of the workers. The worker took us to a part of the woods and handed us the end of a rope and just told us to follow to the end and that he would meet us there. So we trekked through the woods (no trail or anything) while it was pitch black, only using this rope as a guide. It was a blast to say the least. There would be one brave soul who went in front and attempted to alert us of various unidentifiable obstacles. (“So there’s some big thing you have to step over… uhmm, you’re going to have to crawl under a fallen tree or something up here…”)

The next day we broke into different groups based on what activities we requested. There were options of kayaking, canoeing, rappelling, hiking, caving, mountain biking, and high ropes course. I ended up doing the high ropes course and kayaking. Again, a really good time. At the end of kayaking, our guide had us play “kayak football,” where we were divided into teams — red kayaks against blue — and had to get this ball into his canoe. You weren’t allowed to have the ball in your kayak for more than 3 seconds, but other than that there really weren’t any rules. I started getting really intense into it, and at one point I leaned a bit too far in a desperate attempt to snatch the ball, and flipped my kayak. The water was really cold, but it was a lot of fun anyway : )
I took one for the team.

Heading to the high ropes course

After kayaking. I'm completely soaked.

Then we finished up the day with a showing of Braveheart in the common room after dinner. We left on Sunday morning and stopped at Loch Lomond on the way back. A fantastic weekend. We have another trip in a few weeks, this time to the very scenic Isle of Skye.

Loch Lomond

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