My last week in Europe followed my final week in Freiburg. After the going away dinner with my fellow IES students, Kenny and I caught an early morning flight from Basel to Edinburgh. We started our day out right with some amazing tea and a full Scottish breakfast (I had blood pudding and loved it).

One of the coolest buildings we saw at the castle was the chapel, the oldest standing building in Edinburgh. After our explorations of the fortress it was time to try some famous Scotch whisky.

Kenny and I decided to explore some old cemeteries of course. These photos are from the Old Calton Burial Ground.

We climbed up to Calton Hill..

And then cut through another cemetery on the way to the palace.

The Queen happened to be in residence! You can see in these photos the Royal Banner of Scotland is out.

I then indulged Kenny in what ended up being an amazing tour of the relatively new Scottish Parliament. We couldn’t see some of the main rooms so we got to be the few people to actually go inside the offices of the parliament and sit in the famous “think pods”.

We then climbed up to Arthur’s Seat, which was more difficult than I expected. The wind was so strong up there that it stole your breath away.

 

We then trekked to Craigmillar Castle, where I found out some scenes from Outlander season 3 had just been filmed!

 

The castle was in pretty amazing shape. considering. That night we did a Ghost Tour of Edinburgh, which took us into the amazingly creepy underground vaults.

The next day we took a bus to Glasgow, and I was not nearly as impressed. It was an interesting city, but not my type of sight-seeing. We checked out the Glasgow Cathedral and the Necropolis (Kenny and I like cemeteries) but headed back to Edinburgh sooner than we had planned.

After our adventures in Scotland (P.S. haggis is delicious!), we took a bus to our last destination, London.

We got the London Pass, and decided to spend our first day there taking a tour bus and getting acquainted with the city.

We walked to Buckingham palace from our hotel just off of Hyde Park.

We spent a few hours exploring Kensington as well, which I found very interesting since I love everything involving Queen Victoria.

Luckily, the London Pass let us skip the lines at the Tower, so we got to see a lot there.

We also made a special stop at Lloyd’s so I could get some souviners and some cheesy pictures.

We then hopped on a boat (also included in the London Pass) and traveled down the Thames.

We got off at Westminster and went inside (unfortunately there was no photography allowed). It was crazy to see the burial places of so many famous monarchs and historical figures.

We then made a short stop at Whitehall, which had an amazing ceiling by Peter Paul Rubens. This banqueting hall functions as both a museum and an event space.

One of the coolest things that I saw in London was the Churchill War Rooms. It was like stepping into history.

The last good picture I have is from our trip to King’s Cross, where I got to see Platform 9 3/4.

London was amazing. I feel like I saw a lot of what I wanted to see, but that was only scratching the surface. I will absolutely have to visit again.

Well, that does it for that Europe trip. Now all I have to do is pick out a few choice pictures from trips to 11 countries and 22 cities and gather my hundreds of souvenirs into something resembling a scrapbook. Wish me luck!