This is my weekly recap of my travels, foods, and experiences in my third week in London.
Day 15
On July 31st we were able to test our app for the second time in a much more daunting museum: the Victoria & Albert. This museum is notoriously large and confusing, so it was a lot different than the Tate Britain, which was only one level with a more straightforward layout. The V&A has a combined collection of modern and classical art, ranging from Greek sculpture to contemporary African fashion. Behind the Tate Modern, I would say that the V&A is my second favorite museum in London. I think it's one of those museums you could easily spend the whole day in and find something interesting around every corner.
During this particular visit, I was there more so for leisure so I could really get a feel of the museum itself. At one point, I ended up in the courtyard with my other class members, and Sydney and I ran through the large splash pool (deeper than expected). I ventured up to the third floor and found a famous bust of Queen Victoria herself and a portrait by Kehinde Wiley. Because we were supposed to visit the Science Museum before our train ride in the afternoon, our adventure at the V&A was cut short.
Flash forward to the Science Museum, which is conveniently located directly across from the V&A. TBH the anxiety of not being prepared to take the train that afternoon was getting to me so this museum was not super enjoyable. It had a lot of interesting content, including engineering feats from the industrial revolution to the modern day as well as some of Stephen Hawking's possessions. Up a few too many flights of stairs, there was a psychology exhibit that had interactive modules. After meandering through the gift shop, we returned home to urgently pack for our train to Edinburgh!
Around 4 o'clock, we boarded our train at King's Cross Station, the infamous train station featured in the Harry Potter Series where Platform 9 3/4 was located. Being able to ride the speed train was really neat to me because we don't have anything like that in Kentucky, let alone in the United States really. The train ride started out normal enough until we suffered a handful of fatalities... a small group of sheep wandered onto the track in front of the train ahead of us. This delayed our train a little under an hour, and we ended up arriving around 10:30 pm. We grabbed a quick dinner at McDonald's and ventured up WAY too many stairs to get to our flat.
Me at the V&A Museum
Day 16
Once we woke up, we were able to really take in the sights of our flat. It was a very cozy flat that appeared to be very old. It had these huge, beautiful windows that overlooked the city, an elegant marble fireplace, and complex crown moulding in every room. I had noticed on the first day that we were directly overlooking an old graveyard, but I didn't think much of it.
Our first official day in Edinburgh began with a trip to a local thrift store. They had lots of cute things, but I decided to refrain in order to save packing space. After this, we popped into a 1970s themed brunch restaurant called Mum's. It was here were I began to see the cultural difference between Londoners and Edinburghers. Londoners seem to be very reserved and to themselves, and when you do something against the status quo they silently judge you. Edinburghers are more willing to speak up when you do something stupid. Which, after two weeks in London, I appreciated their brutal honesty. This honestly made them more approachable.
We ventured down the main street of Edinburgh that had a wide variety of street performers, Scottish tourist shops, and historic buildings. We purchased our souvieners and continued on until we found a hidden kilt shop down a narrow passage called Celtic Craft Centre Kiltmakers. We decided to wander in and ended up chatting with the owners of the store, who asked us for our last names and found our clan's tartan (mine was an Irish Tara Murphy Tartan). We ventured out to a small park to enjoy the weather and watch the seagulls near the Scott Monument before it was time to head home.
For dinner, we decided to take turns making "family dinners" since we had access to a real kitchen for the first night in two weeks. This night, we had spaghetti, cheesy bread, salad, and brownies. It was so nice to have a home cooked meal! That night we decided to have a cozy night in and watch movies.
The ominous Scott Monument in Edinburgh
Day 17
As I woke up this morning and looked outside, I really began to take notice of the graveyard that our flat overlooked. I noticed it was quite ominous and very old, but seeing as though Edinburgh was a historic city I didn't think about it too much.
We started out yet again down the Royal Mile to shop and look around. This day we decided to eat at a local pub, where I got Scampi and Chips and a pint. We walked up the road rather than down to look at the beautiful Edinburgh Castle, which we unfortunately were unable to go into because tickets were sold out. We wandered around and sight-saw for a bit before getting bubble tea and gelato and heading back to the air bnb to start dinner.
This night, we had chicken fajitas, chips and salsa, guacamole, and rice. After doing homework for a bit, we set out down the Royal Mile for another late night ghost tour! As we were heading down, we stopped and watched banana man, a street performer who made improvisational songs about topics provided by the audience while wearing a banana costume. This resulted in Kyndall being bullied into a banana man dance contest and subsequently a member of banana man's band, where she was dressed as a banana playing tambourine. With 5 mins to spare, we rushed down the hill after her exciting participation to meet our ghost tour on time.
At the tour, we walked around the Royal Mile to a handful of historical sites, including the building in which thieves were publically punished, the grounds in which several bodies were dug up and reburied about a mile away, and the surface above an old prison where locals would spit to show their disgust. After our above ground tour, we took down the hill to enter Edinburgh's underground city...
We entered an inconspicuous doorway that led below the surface of the city. Our guide informed us that in the 1980s, the owner of the property sought to renivate his home and discovered an abandoned tunnel. This tunnel was about 200 feet long with a small half-cylindrical room at one of the ends. We learned later that the cylindrical room, which was adorned with various dolls and toys, was home to several children that were housed there to quarantine during plague times. Towards the end of the tour, our guide was talking about one of the most haunted graveyards in the world located in Edinburgh where she had found a man there that had recently overdosed. As she was describing the graveyard, we put the pieces together and discovered...it was the very same graveyard that our flat overlooked.
Once we returned home around midnight, I decided to do some more research on the graveyard. I discovered from my research as well as our guide that it was home to the Mackenzie Poltergeist, a very aggressive spirit that was a horrible human being. He was one of the sole overseers of at least a thousand religious prisoners in what has been described as one of the world's first concentration camps in the 1700s. Greyfrairs Kirkyard has an area dedicated to these victims in The Covenanters' Prison section (the one that lay directly below our windows). In a cruel twist of fate, George Mackenzie is buried mere yards away from this section in a black mausoleum.
Underground Edinburgh
Day 18
Despite spitting on the Heart of Midlothian outside St. Giles and rubbing the nose of Greyfrairs Bobby for good luck, our luck this day was really bad. We were due to board the train that day in the late afternoon back to London, so we had planned to check our luggage at the train station and spend the afternoon exploring before we departed. Before we did this, we had to check out the super haunted graveyard we had been sleeping above.
It was a gloomy, gray morning that was almost too characteristic for a spooky graveyard. Upon entering, we were greeted by the grave and statue of Greyfrairs Bobby, the loyal little terrier dog that stayed by his owners grave until the day that he died. We wandered over to the prisoner's section to find that it was chained off and only accessible via tour. This led us right up to Mackenzie's Mausoleum. No one reported any strange sensations or bruising as other reports suggested. We wandered around a bit longer and then decided to head to the station to drop off our stuff. From here, we got lunch at an Italian restaurant, said our final goodbye to Edinburgh castle, and lounged in the grass until it was time to collect our bags. Our plans swiftly changed once we discovered that a disturbance on the railway would require us to stay in Edinburgh an extra night.
Quite obviously this was an issue due to the fact that we had nowhere else to go. The three groups of our class that were in Edinburgh at the time only booked their hotels/air bnb's for the 2-3 nights they were there. Thanks to the guidance of Sydney's mom, we thought to call the owner of the air bnb that housed the nine of us for three nights and she graciously agreed to let 12 of us stay there for the night. With this new plan, we traded our tickets for a later departure, got snacks from the local Sainsbury's, and headed to the air bnb with our luggage. As we made our way up the steep hills, it began to pour down rain so we soggily heaved our luggage all the way back to our flat. That night, we played Clue, sipped wine, and read tarot cards despite our misfortune.
Home of George Mackenzie in Greyfrairs Kirkyard
Day 19
Today was our ACTUAL last day in Edinburgh. I was going to miss hearing the bagpipes in the morning coming from our windows. To counteract what we had to go through yesterday, we called a taxi to drive us to the station. A tall, quiet older Scottish gentleman in a driver's suit emerged from the taxi to help us stack our luggage in the trunk. He quietly returned to the driver's seat and started the car. As the radio came on, Mrs. Dolly Parton's Jolene began playing. We took this as a positive sign.
We got on the train at around 10am and ventured back to London. We had a very productive train ride as we mainly worked on homework on the way back (wifi on the train!). Once we arrived back in London, we grabbed a quick bite and returned to LSE to have class with Kara.
Day 20
With virtually two days left in class, we knew that today and tomorrow would be rough. After speaking to Kara yesterday, she encouraged me to recruit Abby and Paige to follow me to Portobello Market to take pictures for my campaign in the abundant vintage stores and outdoor markets. We took the tube up north to get reference material for both mine and Abby's themes (retro perspective and high fashion, respectively). Abby and Paige were both natural models for my campaign and we got some amazing pics. We celebrated over lunch and returned to the tube to get to class and participate in a critique. We hit up the Amazon Fresh store once again to stock up on snacks and worked throughout the night.
Paige and I at Portobello Market
Day 21
Today was, again, a pretty intensive work day. We worked for a while in the morning on Natalie's class, which I spent adding the final textures to my poster in Photoshop. In the afternoon, we reserved afternoon tea at the British Museum. I would say that the Earl Grey Tea and scones with jam that I had was some of the best I'd ever had. As for the crab and cucumber sandwiches...
We returned to LSE to have class in the afternoon and made group plans to eat at a local pub. Here I got a big ol burger and pint that was pretty good, but I was ready for authentic, greasy American food TBH. We returned home and had another night of intense homeworking.
Me with tea
Day 22
Today was our final free day in London. We begun the morning by having a brief departure meeting with Jerry and then we set off toward the London Eye. I thought this was going to be a lost cause because we found out that the tickets for that day had been sold out online the previous night. Still hopeful, we made our way there and discovered that we were able to buy 7 tickets JUST in time. We were able to take our ride on the Eye! It was honestly a really neat experience and we were able to see a LOT.
After we got off the Eye, we wandered over to the food truck area and had lunch. I ended up getting a Mediterranian chicken and halloumi kebab with taziki, salad, and pita bread and strawberry gelato for dessert. From here, we took the Tube to Camden Market that had an interesting mix of historical/vintage and modern/tourism attractions. There were vintage clothing stores, record stores, crystal shops, restaurants, etc. etc.
After Camden, we traveled to Abbey Road and took crosswalk pics. Having had a particularly busy day, we bused back to LSE and took naps before dinner.
For dinner, we ended up at a Wagamama's, which is a fancy-casual asian chain restaurant. I had grilled chicken ramen that was in desperate need of some flavor. After a little bit, Jerry came in to eat and we invited him to sit with us at our table and visit. After chatting for awhile, we left to get more gelato. This time 'round I got cherry gelato which was delicious.
After a satisfying last day, I returned back to the hotel, packed up my belongings, and settled in for a goodnight's sleep.
Kyndall, Sydney, Sol, Abby, Haley, Shelby R., and I in the London Eye
Comments