Your French Word of the Week

We interrupt this vacation recap to bring you the following:

I'm a sucker for a freebie, so I signed up for Clarin's newsletter to enter my name in a contest to win some eyeliner...and then I checked out the site a little bit more.  And what do I see?

Bon Mots - French Word of the Week

Plus apparently Clarins is all about French beauty, so.....new favorite cosmetic company?

Check it out, learn some French words....the end. 

Just a wee trip to Scotland, lads and lasses

Here's your travel tip of the day - do not take an overnight bus after the age of 25, unless there are beds to lie down in (think Knight Bus, Harry Potter style).  You will not sleep well on a night bus, and unless you are in that magical time of life when a lack of sleep doesn't slow you down at all, you will feel it.  Boy, will you.  

We happily managed to get on a bus that wasn't making any stops between London and Edinburgh (pronounced Edinborough, or Edinburuh) and so arrived at our destination at like 6:30 am.  We walked up to our hostel, and then I saw this across the street:

They didn't call it Castle Rock Hostel for nothing!  Oh, click here for a picture of the actual hostel we stayed in.  Right?!  Anyway, we did the whole checking in process but couldn't get into our rooms until like 2 pm, so we freshened up, dropped our bags in the storage room, and went out for breakfast.  And I had the full English, which looks a little bit like this:

Eggs, bacon, sausages, blood sausage (gross), a roasted tomato, baked beans (not like our baked beans) and a potato scone.  YUM.  I almost ate the whole gosh darn thing.  After breakfast we went down the Royal Mile to Holyrood Palace, which is where the Queen stays when she's in Scotland and where she has her annual Garden Party.  We got there right before it opened, waited in line and bought tickets, and then went in with our audio guides for a li'l tour.  We weren't allowed to take photos inside the palace, but I did get some awesome shots of the outside and some ruins at the back:

And I'm gonna end that post here, 
a) because I'm sleepy and need to go to bed
b) because I took a LOT of pics in Scotland, so there will be multiple posts

I'll leave you with this thought - my Scottish accent wasn't all that bad.

Lunch in London and a night bus to Scotland

I write this post as a recovering gimp - a friend and I did a mini-trip up to Philly today for the Radio 104.5 Block Party, featuring Walk off the Earth, Alt-J and PANIC! AT THE DISCO.  Can you tell who I was there to see?  Anyway, Walk off the Earth was awesome, but in between their set and Alt-J taking the stage, some drunk, under-age (bleep) decided to cause a chain reaction of people falling over.  In the chaos, I was pushed back into the metal barriers that we were standing in front of, and somehow one of them ended up crushing my left foot.  I had a dickens of a time getting it up high enough so I could scoot my foot out, and then my friend got me over to the first-aid section, to the side of the stage.  All I needed was an ice pack and to sit down for a bit, thankfully, while we watched one of the drunk under-agers get hauled off by security.  My friend was watching the show from where we were standing and ended up befriending one of the crew members for WotE, who got us backstage passes and let us hang out with him and the rest of the crew for a bit.  And then, and THEN....all the members of Panic! at the Disco walked right by me and proceeded to blow my mind. I have loved them since 2005, have all their albums and have never seen them live...until today.  From backstage. Within touching distance when they went on and left the stage. WHAT. THE. WHAT.  In the end, being hurt wasn't such a raw deal after all. 

But I digress.....back in time to London!  When I got back to Jenny's house from the airport on Thursday night, I crashed. Next morning I got up, repacked my overnight bag for Scotland, and went off to meet my friend Jade for lunch.  She and I went to Etown together, and she's been in London for a while doing a Master's degree.  We met outside of Buckingham Palace (classy) and went for lunch in a little pub not too far from there.  

After lunch, we walked back past Buckingham and down to Westminster Abbey, which I finally got to see the inside of.  I felt like such a royal groupie, because I kept trying to figure out which parts I had seen on TV when I watched Will and Kate's wedding a couple years ago. It was stunning inside, but we were't allowed to take pictures.  Here are some shots of Big Ben, Parliament, and the outside of Westminster though:

After Westminster, we got ice cream and strolled over to Trafalgar Square, where we said goodbye and I headed back to Jenny's.  We had dinner and got ready for the trip, then headed for Victoria Coach Station: Scotland or bust!