July 7th- Caledonia and the North Day 3

July 7th 2012

Weatherwise: It was a bit cloudy, and later rained a lot. How much? At the level that if a Southern Californian were there, he would whine, and automatically go on facebook then update his status to "OMFG IT'S POURING!" 

Anyways, today I woke up at 8:30 A.M. showered and proceeded to eat a British breakfast for champions again..(for those whom are wondering what this is. Refer to my previous blog post July 6th) only this time I ended up eating it with my close friends. After breakfast, I boarded the coach (bus) with Jason, Katharine, Sesenu etc. to the Scottish National Gallery. Needless to say I think the art geek in me fangirled and screamed in joy...not because this was my first museum trip in Europe...but .....the Scottish National Gallery has works by the greats including Tizziano Vecellio (Titian), Leonardo Da Vinci, Rembrandt Van Rijn (Rembrandt), Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (Michelangelo for short), Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (Raphael) for short and so many more. If that wasn't enough to fangirl about here's an awesome fact about British Museums. For anyone who visits United Kingdom, it's free entrance to national museums >:) so essentially you get to see works by the greats without spending a pence (penny)! 

The cherry on top of this visit? My professor, Thomas Newbolt was going to give a tour of his favorite works, how to analyze and look at art, the spirituality of the works, and so forth. Basically a long- indepth analysis on the history of art, what techniques can you learn, how does the theoretical come into play with the technique of art....etc.

So what I learned in a nutshell at the museum because quite honestly even for me everything he said was so meta that it was a bit overwhelming to take all at once. 

Despite the fact that he suggested that we look at a few pieces each visit rather than look at every piece.....I'm an opportunist so I will try to look at every work. Alas the problem with this is I don't have the same amount of time to appreciate the same works; thus, by the time I write this blog, I do not believe I will remember everything about all of the artworks I've seen. So while I can say I've seen the artwork, I did not truly see the paintings the way a true artist would see them :[ 

2. What Thomas said to do: look at the painting first from the far back...then walk up to it in the middle...and get closer....your perspective changes based on WHERE and HOW you look at the painting. Some paintings will seem incredibly distorted (via subject and background) and will not make sense unless you step further away. That's because some paintings were meant to be looked that way. Most of these had subjects related to god, so the idea is the painting is magnified in size to glorify aspects of holiness, and bring you the subject back into reality (aka make you realize that you're pretty much insignificant compared to the painting.). 

3. The subject is not painted (esp. during the italian renaissance or before the italian renaissance) without its relationship to the painter being understood. (goes back to point 2. making you realize you're human when you stare at the majestic nature of a painting.)

4. Cezzane used multiple eye levels to create paintings that seemed believable yet were perspective wise illogical. It's an illusion trick where you draw objects and make it look like they're coming out at you despite the fact that they're far by increasing the scale of the object closer to the viewer or decreasing the object further from the viewer.

Ok art geek moment over.....anyways my friends went to check out the rest of Edinburgh while I checked out the rest of the gallery. Afterwards, I was afraid of getting lost so I ended up following a group of random PKPers, and we ended up at The Elephant House, the cafe where J.K. Rowling first created the Harry Potter series. 

The entrance to The elephant house.

For those whom are wondering: J.K. Rowling actually started out fairly poor, like she was actually WRITING the harry potter series on napkins...although it's said that she first started the series at The Elephant House, in reality she wrote in many different cafes in Edinburgh. Still cool to see that the tagline of the place was "Birthplace of Harry Potter." I didn't buy anything at the Elephant House though I do regret not at least getting a pastry or a coffee. Oh well. 

Afterwards, we ended up at "Mum's Great Comfort Food." I was hoping this place had Haggis....sadly it did not BUT it does have great British food. So in total the group I was with got 4 meals and split them between 6 people. We ordered the Herby Pork sausage some type of mash (mash potatoes) and carmelized gravy, Venison (deer) with the Moroccan mash, and red currant pie, Pumpkin and Sage pie, and the St. Giles Ale and Steak pie. Haha this was my first time trying deer and I actually thought it was pretty good. It's quite lean. Overall I enjoyed it despite the fact that well British cuisine in general tends to be a little dry. Afterwards we walked back, and I visited a few shops (Poundsland....wow totally the dollar tree of UK) with surprisingly decent quality, and a few other shops to get some souviners. Haha sadly I did not buy a kilt, although if I go again I will get one for some of my guy friends. On a random note I also saw a Scottish lass (man) dressed in traditional attire playing bagpipes. That was amazing! 

Cute menu

Venison stew with Morrocan mash. Amazing British comfort food :)

A Scotsman with his bagpipes making a ton of pounds from tourists.

Afterwards, I headed back and rested for a few hours. Then after that I caught up with Sesenu, Jason, Casey, and Katharine and we headed off to Royal Oak Pub because we wanted to go to a pub that had live music while we drank. Only one small problem with this. Oh my god this pub was PACKED and CRAMMED to the point that we couldn't even move once we got in so we decided to walk around and check out the other pubs in the rain. We couldn't find other pubs that weren't so packed so we went back to the Banshee's Labyrinth. I got a coke mixed with Scotch and we sat down, changed the jukebox, listened to music, and played billiards with a few Scots.  Wow I suck at Billiards to the point that I think I need to start playing Billiards soon....to at least not knock the white cue ball off the pool table...oh right I forgot that we then ended the night by dancing to more dubstep and heavy metal..

Banshee Labyrinth entrance..inside yes it is quite the labyrinth with rooms staircases etc everywhere

One of the rooms inside the Banshee Labyrinth with Casey and Katharine.

Wow needless to say even though I didn't do as much as I did the other few days, I think the day overall was amazing :). Sigh it's too bad it's my last night in Edinburgh though :[. In these few days Caledonia has grown on me as a second home, and honestly I will miss Scotland quite a lot. Caledonia, please wait for me. One day I will come back to you, and see you again. It's not a goodbye as much as a see you later.

Today, instead of ending this blog with words of looking forward tomorrow, I thought I'd end this blog about my experience of Caledonia in Dougie Mclean's words,

               "Let me tell you that I love you, and I think about you all the time. Caledonia you're calling me, now I'm coming home. But if I should become a stranger you know that would make me more than sad. Caledonia's been everything I've ever had." 

Until next time, Cheers!

Tina Lin

July 6th Caledonia and the North Day 2

July 6th 2012

Weather wise: Today was a bit grey and cloudy, I honestly thought it would rain. 

Anyways, today I woke up with sore feet and took a shower at 8AM. (Yes, this did mean that I ended up sleeping for 3 hours before waking up.) After showering, I went to get breakfast and I'm still in amazement of how I made it to the shower or to breakfast without collapsing, but somehow I did. 

Breakfast: One of the few free meals of the trip + all you can eat = awesome!

Seeing how I'm in Scotland I made it a mission to try Haggis. For those whom are wondering what the infamous Haggis is, it's basically minced sheep heart, lung, and liver mixed with onion, oatmeal, stock etc, traditionally encased in sheep stomach. Sadly it wasn't Sheep Haggis, and was Beef Haggis. I doubt it was actually encased in cow stomach, so the adventurous foodie in me is a little bit disappointed in both the fact that it wasn't made of sheep and  probably encased in a cow sausage casing rather than a cow's stomach. I'll admit though despite my disappointment I thought it was pretty good. Also today I discovered that I love Blood Pudding because it resembles a Chinese dish called Zhu Xue Gao (Pig's blood with rice) 

Traditional British breakfast of champions:
 Sunny side up egg, blood pudding (black thing on plate), bacon (what we Americans call ham), brown haggis (next to bacon), sauteed mushroom and tomatoes, two types of hash, banana, and grapefruit. Oh and of course no champion  breakfast is complete without Orange Juice >:) 

So after breakfast I wore a my water resistant jacket, then proceeded to wear my pancho OVER my jacket and proceeded to find out where I was suppose to meet for the hiking. I ran into Greg who stated that future PKPers could learn a thing or two from the way I dressed. (I wore hiking boots, thick cargo pants, shirt with water resistant jacket topped off with a waterproof pancho.) Needless to say, I think I was prepared for any terraine that Scotland would bring to me. 


So I went on the coach, and noticed my friend Corey Cherrington and met some new BYU people. We did stop by a Sainsburry to get our lunches, and I wished I bought a larger waterbottle. After an hour or two of the coach's driving, we ended up at Killin, Scotland and proceeded to hike the Sron a'Chlachain and Creag Buidhe Hill Path.

I have absolutely NO idea how to pronounce this.

Needless to say, I was not as physically as prepared as I wished I was, and was possibly one of the slowest if not the slowest hiker. When the British mean hiking...they mean HIKING. Quite literally 4.1 km to the top of the mountain. (2.5 miles + up.) Haha, I sang I'll make a man out of you as I was going up to energize myself, and needless to say I got some applause. Anyways,I will say I was awestruck by the gorgeous surroundings. I think pictures in this case pictures do justice to describing the spectacular scenery than my words, so here are a few pictures from my hike! 

The beginning: walking through the grass that is high enough that it reaches my knees.
Marco Polo anyone?

Climbing up....oooo....i'm 1/4...of the way there......this is going to be a LONG hike.
At least the scene is beautiful (minus the electric poles)

Taking a break and enjoying the breathtakingly green view.
Scotland is so lusciously green!

                        This picture is refusing to let me caption it so I'm just going to say: and higher.

and higher...but with more mountains!

                                       Halfway point: Wow, Loch Tay is certainly beautiful from up here.

Conquering the halfway point...LIKE A BOSS!

Alright so somehow I made it to the halfway point, and we had an option of not hiking to the top, but did I stop? Hell no. YOLO! so because I only live once, I had to hike to the top >:)  So, while the view isn't pretty, and yes at some point unfortunately I did step in sheep manure. EWE (bad pun.) I stubbornly dragged my body and hiked to the top!

Made it to the top...like a boss? no. LIKE A CHAMPION! 

So afterwards, despite being the slowest to get to the top, once I made it I had a 2 minute break then.it was going back down Sron a'Chlachain. Ok so I'm 2 times slower than everyone when it comes to hiking so hiking downwards was quite the pain. One of the PAs while waiting for me was herb hunting, and found wood sorrel. I was curious myself and asked him if I could try it. For anyone wondering what is wood sorrel and what it tastes like, wood sorrel is a weed that looks like a clover, and tastes like crisp green granny apple skins. Hiking down, I did a little bit of wood sorrel hunting myself and the foodie in me enjoyed every moment.

So after hiking down, I think I was too sore and did complain about my feet dying; however, I'm not sure what in me said let's go hike around LochTay! Somehow....I just ended up doing just that too. I liked this hike better because it didn't involve hiking UPHILL, and was munching on a carrot. (yes incredibly random) Anyways, the scenery was just as beautiful if not even more so here are some pictures!

And then there were cows..


Loch Tay is beautiful is she not?

Touristy picture of me taken by a British tourist!


This tree looked so interesting so I had to take a picture of it.


So I know in my past post and this one, I kept on mentioning sheep.
In honor of sheep, I thought I'd leave this. 

Alright so by the time I got back on the coach, it was 3PM and heading back took a little bit longer than I expected. One of my friends had to use the bathroom, so we ended up making a pitstop for him to do his business. So by the time we got back, it was 6:15 PM and there was less than an hour or so to go anywhere to eat so I ended up paying 12 pounds to eat dinner at Edinburgh University's cafeteria. By the time I paid for my food I had 15 minutes to eat so I rushed because I really wanted to make sure I could make it to the Ceilidh Dance. Turns out, I ended up coming to the location a bit early. Oh well, there were snacks and wine so it wasn't too bad waiting + I got to meet more new people and hang out with Jason, Katharine, and Sesenu. 

The Ceilidh Dance experience:

Ceilidh dancing is like country square dancing only....more gaelic. There's a dance caller whom instructs novices how to dance before the dance, and there's a live band playing in kilts. Ok girly moment, but kilts on guys are HOT! The dance is fairly simple, and for one whom wonders what it looks like, it almost resembles the dance scene in the recent Pride and Prejudice movie when Mr. Darcy asks Ms. Bennet to dance with him. Basically a lot of it is partner dancing and switching around. So how was the experience? Put 250 people in one tiny room and imagine square dancing. It's a HOT mess. I'm still surprised people didn't completely crash into each other every minute. Oh and incredibly random, but BYU PKPers can dance. I don't know what it is but every BYU person I met knew how to dance to some degree.

Tip for future guy pkpers. If you want to get the beautiful girls to dance with you, do yourself a favor and get a kilt . EVERY girl will want to dance with you because you're wearing the kilt. The proportion of girls a guy could get was much higher when he wore a kilt that night. Haha.

So overall Ceilidh Dance was so fun I wished I could repeat this night. I met a lot of people, made new friends, and learned that I can't LEAD for the life of me xD. Beyond that, dancing with Katharine, Jason, and other friends was AMAZING! I think I'm now addicted to ceilidh dance!

Carrying Katharine with Jason in the danceroom.
She is totally the queen of Ceilidh dancing. 

 

The Scottish band in awesome kilts whom played for us.
(The one with the violin is the caller) 

So after the night, I was asked if I wanted to go explore Edinburgh some more, and to this I had to politely decline because my feet were so sore I was actually limping to my room. I plopped on my bed, and crashed. Yep. That's how exhausted I was.

Note that day I wrote: "Overall though day 2 has been exhaustively fun, and I'm definitely looking forward to day 3." 

Until next time, Cheers!


Tina