Kayla & Vanessa's Visit: Days 7-9

7.

Friday morning, we rushed out of the hostel and purchased a tube pass for the day.

We only had so many hours to see all the famous London sights!

Could we do it?

Well, that remained to be seen... 

Outside our hostel.
It was a really really nice hostel.
The only downside was that it was so far away from the city center.

First stop, Baker Street.
Yes folks, that is 221B!

The lovely Regent's Park.
Canada geese! 

Kayla's awesome heel-clicking-in-mid-air.

I've never seen so many herons in one place before.
There were about ten, just sitting in the grass, people-watching.

Ducklings!
They were so cute and fluffy!

Mr. Sherlock Holmes himself, outside the Baker Street Tube station.

The Marble Arch

Horse-back riding in Hyde Park.

All of a sudden, these gentlemen came through the Wellington Arch
while we were resting our feet for a moment.

It just so happened that when we went by Buckingham Palace,
the guard was changing.
We had to elbow our way through the crowds to see anything.

Buck Palace.

The iconic London Eye.

The even more iconic Big Ben -
with Kayla and Vanessa in front of it, making a cool picture simply awesome.

A statue of Mr. Winston Churchill

And Mr. Oliver Cromwell outside the Parliament buildings.

Westminster Abbey

The Tower Bridge, as seen from London Bridge.

The Tower of London.
Somehow, I thought it would be more... towery and tall.

After London Bridge, we had to book it back to our hostel, pick up our luggage, and race to the train station to head to Edinburgh.

We made the train. Just.

See? The impressive Edinburgh Castle from our hostel window.
That ugly stadium thing in front of it is where they have the Military Tattoo.
It's "temporary," believe it or not.
Now that the Tattoo is over, they can start taking it down so that they can start putting it up again for next year.

8.

The Writers' Museum
Exhibits for Burns, Stevenson, and Scott.
There were things like letters and original notes for manuscripts.
They even had yucky things like locks of hair :s 

Vanessa on a tour bus.

Typical Georgian style buildings that make up "new" Edinburgh.

Behind this rather unassuming shopfront...

...is this.
It made me SO HAPPY.

St. Giles High Kirk
(again)

Clarinda's Tearoom
It's very cute inside with lace table clothes and oodles of china plates on the walls.

Palace of the Holyrood

Arthur's Seat, overlooking the city.

On guard!

I LOVE Kayla's boots.

Courtyard in Holyrood

Ruins of Holyrood Abbey

Scottish Parliament Buildings
Somehow, it seems rather out of place with all the old buildings around it.

Us on a bus tour.

Jekyll & Hyde cafe!

We stayed in the Avengers room at Castle Rock Hostel.

These were our beds:

Me

Vanessa

Kayla

9.

Sunday morning, we went to St. Columba's Free Church of Scotland just down the street from the Castle Rock Hostel.

Vanessa wasn't feeling well, so she went back to the hostel and Kayla and I went back to Clarinda's for lunch.

Princes Street gardens

Kayla and I spent some time in the Scottish National Gallery after lunch.
There were some pretty impressive paintings there!
We spent quite a lot of time in the Italian/Renaissance section.

Goodbye, Castle Rock!
On our way back to Balmullo.

Kayla & Vanessa's Visit: Days 4-6

*Disclaimer:

Phew! So, this post is HUGE.

I was originally going to make it "Days 4-7" 

but I had forgotten how many pictures I had of Hampton Court! 

That could probably be made into a post of its own... 

I hope you enjoy it anyway though.

If you need to, you can take a break part way through...

4.

On Tuesday, we went to Falkland Palace.

We made a pitstop in Auchtermuchty, but the Tannochbrae Tearoom was closed.

Closed! 

It was quite a blow.

Who closes on a Tuesday?

Anyways, Falkland Palace.

The gardens were much lovelier than the last time I was there.

She's so cute :)

Heh, she's pretty adorable too.

A girl with her falcon, perhaps?

She makes me laugh :)

5.

There aren't a lot of pictures from Wednesday.

We took the train down to London!

We were traveling for the majority of the day, and by the time we got to the hostel, 

we were pretty much pooped.

We walked around a bit after checking in, but we were in an area 

just too far from the city center to see anything of real interest.

This is more or less how we spent a large chunk of the day:
Reading and sleeping.

King's Cross train station!
Unfortunately, we didn't have time to find Platform 9 3/4...
Kayla and Vanessa were going to try on their way back to Heathrow,
but I haven't heard if they did.

6.

Thursday was bright and sunny.
Hurrah for sunshine in the UK!
We took the Tube and the Overground to Hampton Court Palace.

On ze train.

The Thames.

taDA!
Hampton Court Palace, ladies and gentlemen.

The Clock courtyard.

This amazing mural/ceiling was in the first room we stepped into.

The guardroom, where visitors were made to wait until they were allowed in to see the King.
According to the guide, the weapons (all fully functional, of course) were intended
to intimidate the French visitors in particular.

A tapestry.
Can you imagine weaving something so huge with such incredible detail?
The folds in the clothing look 3D!

Hey look, there's us.

The King's study.

more frames.

This was in the Orangery.
There were many statues all along the wall.

All of the rooms above were built by William III, or William of Orange,

but the older parts of the palace were inhabited by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

There were some curious beasties on poles in one of the courtyard gardens:

But THIS was my favourite.

It reminds me of the Dr. Seuss book Put Me in the Zoo.

Kayla and I in choir robes.

I love this picture so much.

These pictures are from the kitchens and more servanty areas.

There was a Roman Exhibit.

The Triumphs of Caesar, by Andrea Mantegna

Banquet hall

Outside the Orangery.
Those little shrubs are orange trees.

A nice man took our picture for us in the immaculate, meticulously trimmed Privy Garden.

These next two are from the Pond Gardens.

Giant wisteria

The Great Vine: the largest and probably the oldest still living grape vine in the world.
It's over 240 years old.

Jube-jube trees.

In the lovely Rose Garden:

It smelled amazing in there.

I have never seen (or smelled) so many roses together in one place.

Bushes and bushes of roses.

After Hampton Court Palace, we went to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub for an early supper.

This place was so old and cool!

Built in the 17th century, Charles Dickens could often be found here.

After supper, we went to see Wicked in the Apollo Victoria theatre.
It was AMAZING.
Chills and goosebumps and everything!

The stage.

We are very excited and happily unaware of that guy in the picture behind us.