weekend in the land of wooden shoes

Amsterdam was amazing. I was surprised both at how beautiful it was, and how different it was from Edinburgh. There really are a lot of canals there. There were also a gazillion tourists everywhere. It was really cool to see my friend Kristen too.

Here's what I did that I really liked:
- My favorite thing was a boat cruise we went on my last night. I'd been seeing these long sleek glass-covered tourist boats around the city. When it rained (which wass often), the windows would fog up, and watching the tourists rubbing the windows in a vain attempt to see some of the city. My boat cruise was not like that. My boat cruise was in a little white dinghy driven by a friendly dutch sometimes-musician, sometimes-computer-repairman. When it rained he would park us under a bridge until it cleared up. But the city looked so beautiful at night, with all the lights reflected in the water. It was cool getting to see all the places I'd been trudging around all weeekend from a completely different perspective. And I got to hear lots of stories about everything we saw. Such as, Boatdriver: "see that cool looking tower? They used to make coins there. Now it's a really terrible tourist shop." Me: "I bought a post card there!"
- I dragged everyone to the botanical gardens. The outside parts were a bit sad and wintery, but they had a few greenhouses that were pretty impressive. A really old cycad too. Most of the labels were in dutch unfortunately.
- Also, the museums! Those dutch know how to paint. Seeing paintings in real person after walking past the prints in my hallway at home was really cool too.
- Strong coffee, yay.

I will go back sometime. Part of me wants to buy a houseboat and live on a canal and own a cat. Maybe.

Here are some pictures:

I haven't been having a lot of adventures recently, besides say getting lost in Hollyrood park or experimenting with how little sleep I can survive on. Even though I'm abroad, I still have college, with lots of reading and papers. Two of my friends from Brown are visiting this week: Sam, who's showing up tonight, and Lian, who will be here on Tuesday. And then, Amsterdam. So keep reading, more exciting things should be happening soon.

guess what I bought...

Yes, that toothpaste is called Maclean's, and yes I do love Scotland.
Also, here's a picture from a walk/adventure I took/had today in Holyrood park.

more sights around edinburgh

Also, I'll be heading to Amsterdam for a few days at the end of the month. Any suggestions for things to see?

my neighborhood

Hermit's Croft (where I live):


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Walking to class:



Clerk St:


Now you know what the south side of Edinburgh looks like. Yay.

why to study abroad

I actually had schoolwork this weekend. What an idea. So I trooped off to the Edinburgh University Library to write a literature paper.

After an hour of working I decided it was time to go on a walk. So I walked north, across the bridge, into 'new town'. Now, Edinburgh's new town is not new. In fact, it's old. By Los Angeles standards, ancient. But the streets go straight, so I guess that's something. I wandered around a bit until I saw this giant reddish-orange semi-gothic building. I thought to myself, 'hmm, what's that?' So I went up to investigate and discovered that the giant red building was the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and free.

I don't think I've ever been to a portrait gallery before. It seems like kind of a wonky idea actually, dedicating an entire gallery to paintings chosen not for their artistic merit, but because the people in them are famous. And anyway, you don't see national still life galleries anywhere. But it was actually pretty cool. The building was gorgeous and some of the paintings were quite nice. I found one of Robert Louis Stevenson and looked at it for a while, hoping I'd gain some insight into my paper, which is about one of his books. But it didn't help.

After about a half hour I realized that I should head back to the library. I walked out of new town (it's so easy to get around when the streets are straight and intersect at right angles). I climbed the hill onto the royal mile, emerging in front of St. Giles and the David Hume statue. Right on cue a decked-out bagpipe player started playing. It was great. Even better, the library here closes at 5pm - a great excuse to stop working early, come home, and start composing a blog entry.

Cheers!