And I'm off!

I have officially left Glasgow and am sitting on the train on my way to London. I have 2 duffles/backpacks, a small canvas bag and another stuffed backpack. This morning my cab drive was SO amazing and parked the car, got out, and helped me carry my luggage to the train. I don't know what I'm going to do trying to get off the train and get to my hostel in London. I don't even want to think about that hassle.

So, for those of you who don't know, I am leaving Glasgow and traveling around Europe until June 18th when I fly home. Tomorrow morning I meet up with a tour group at 6:30am and we head from London to Paris. We are then going to spend two nights in Paris, two nights in the Swiss Alps, two nights in Florence, and one night in Rome. When the trip ends in Rome I will be hopping on a plane from Rome to Belgrade, Serbia where my second cousin(?) will be waiting for me at the airport. I will then spend 3 or 4 nights in Serbia. (Who knows, I might even want to spend more time there because of how exhausted I'll be from traveling...but there are a lot of places on my list that I want to check off.) Right now, my plan is to go from Belgrade to Budapest, stay in Budapest for a couple nights and then move onto Krakow. My goal is to visit Auschwitz. From Krakow I will travel to Austria, most likely stay in Vienna for a night or two and then finally make my way to Prague. I will be staying in Prague for a few nights before my flight leaves from Prague (to London) on June 16th. Once I am finally back in London, I will gather my bags that I will be leaving there when I get to London today, and prepare myself to fly out on June 18th.

This is going to be a long, exhausting, but exciting trip and I can't wait for it to start. Right now I am traveling alone, but who knows, maybe I'll find someone who is doing the same route as me. (That would be my ideal situation.) I'm definitely a little nervous, but I think it's going to be a really good trip for me to learn how to get around on my own in countries where I don't speak the language. There are bound to be some bumps in the road, but I hope it goes pretty smoothly. I will try to do small updates on my blog along the way just so you all know where I am, but they will have to be from internet cafes. I will not be traveling with my laptop. Only a backpack, a notebook, and an emergency cell phone. I love you all so much and please send me emails so I have something to look forward to when I find an internet cafe!

Love Always,

Jess

I'm horrible...I know!

Well, I have been absolutely horrible about keeping you all updated on my life abroad. I AM ALIVE! I have just been enjoying my time here in Glasgow, traveling around Scotland with friends, taking small day trips, continuing with my art classes at the Glasgow School of Art and practicing bagpiping. Spring break was amazing with my parents...we traveled all around Ireland, Scotland, and we even made it to London after my parents missed their flight home due to the volcanic ash cloud. I will be sure to update you all on everything I have been up to over the past two months, I'll start writing it down and post the highlights ASAP. I just wanted to share a photo album with all of you of my past couple of weeks in Scotland.

I went to the Beltane Fire Festival in Edinburgh with my friend Morgan. I ended up missing the train back to Glasgow so I stayed in her flat for the night and returned to Glasgow in the morning (after a little shopping).

On Friday, I took a trip with 5 of my friends to the Isle of Skye which is a beautiful island in the north of Scotland. We took a train (5 hours) from Glasgow to Mallaig. On the way up there, we went over the bridge they used for the Hogwarts Express in Harry Potter. When we got to Mallaig, we hopped on the ferry to Skye where we were welcomed by the owner of our hostel. He came to pick us up in his car, and dropped us off for lunch. He returned an hour or two later and drove us to the hostel. We realized then that we should've brought food to cook in the hostel, so we had to call a taxi to take us to the only food store in the area. We bought pasta and tomato sauce and decided to pick fresh mussels down at the water. After dropping the food off in our kitchen, we walked down to the water, soaked up the sun, and picked a bunch of mussels off the rocks that the boys (Liam and Ted) cooked for us.

After dinner we enjoyed just hanging out, looking at the beautiful view from our hostel, and learning more about each other. When we were about to go to bed, I told Laura to look out the window because the stars were so bright. We then decided to get out of bed, knock on the boys' door and go stargazing outside. We were outside for an hour just looking up at the stars and seeing about 5 magnificent shooting stars and a bunch of constellations. Nobody had ever seen so many shooting stars in their life.

The next morning we left the hostel at 10am after the boys made us a breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast (what would we do without them?). We walked around for a while just looking at the scenery and enjoying the sunny day. We really lucked out with weather, and even got some color. We are all so pale from cold, gray Glasgow that it was even nice to be red. We walked back to the ferry, went to Mallaig, had an amazing lunch, and then took the train back to Glasgow.

On Sunday we went to the Gourock Highland Games. What we didn't realize when we planned the trip was that there was also a bagpiping championship that my instructor was competing in. When we got there, we enjoyed listening to all of the piping, eating Haggis, Neeps, and Tatties, and watching the heavyweight competitions. These men did everything from shot put to caber toss. It was so much fun to watch. After the piping championships (that my instructor's pipe band WON) we were talking to him and he offered to give us a ride home on the pipe band's bus. So, we left the games at 6:30 (after being there for 6 hours) and took the bus home with the whole band. It was a very good, Scottish adventure-filled weekend and I absolutely loved every part of it.

CLICK HERE for the photo album.

Love and miss you all!

Cheers,

Jess