Sorry I haven’t kept you updated for the past three days. I either got back to my hotel late, or was so exhausted that I couldn’t stay awake. So here are my past three days in another country.

Abby’s Oversea Adventure: Day 3

Today I traveled to the Queen’s Palace. We had to travel down the Royal Mile to get there. The Royal Mile is a street that the King and his men used to ride down in front of interested peasants. It’s a mile long, obviously.

I was in a picture mood. I took pictures of anything and everything that I thought would look good in a scrapbook that I plan to make. I’ll probably upload some of the pictures I took later so that you guys can see them.

Anyway, we went into the ticket place and bought our tickets. My family and I were hungry, so we went into the Palace Café to get lunch. As we were eating, my mom said to me, “I wonder what time the Palace closes.” I looked at the ticket. It said 4:00. I looked at my watch. It said 3:30. Yeah, we pretty much dropped our almost uneaten food and ran to the Palace.

The Palace itself was really cool. It was a light golden color, and it has tons of gargoyles and statues. There was even a huge fountain in the front, and it had a pretty good sized front yard! It seemed like the kind of place that everyone would want to live in. I even wanted to live in it! But my opinion quickly changed when we went inside.

The inside was grand enough, but it just seemed so lonesome and empty. And dark. And creaky! Wherever you stepped a floorboard it would creak so loudly! Anyway, when we walked in, the first thing we saw was the “Grand Staircase.” It was a big stone staircase that was surrounded by various paintings that were painted in the medieval times. The whole Palace looked like this – grand, huge, and medieval. It looked like, well, a palace! There was nothing particularly interesting until we entered Mary Queen of Scott’s bedroom. My mom, grandma, and I have always been interested in Mary Queen of Scott, just because her life was very interesting, historic, and eventful. It was really cool to see where she ate, slept, embroidered, and what her possessions consisted of. They had a lock of her hair, some of her embroidery, and the place where her secretary was murdered.

After the Palace, we walked up the Royal Mile to try and find a place to eat and get a taxi. All the places were bars, so no one would let me in. After walking for about half an hour, we finally flagged down a taxi.

Although the day was tiring, it was really cool to see where the Queen stays in Scotland. After seeing the Palace, I’m glad I’m not royalty! That might sound weird, but the Palace is dark and lonely, and kind of scary! Plus, how would you like it if the fate of a continent depended on you?

Abby’s Oversea Adventure: Day 4

Today was the last day of Scotland. Today is also my mom’s business conference (the reason we’re here), which means that it’s just my grandma and me. Which also means… shopping!!! My grandma (being the loving person she is!) agreed to take me shopping today. I researched on the Internet and found some stores within walking distance that I wanted to visit. They included: BHS Ltd, New Look, Applejack, and Schuh. First stop was BHS. I knew it was on Princes Street, so we walked up there and turned right. We walked for about 20 minutes, all the way to the end of Princes Street, which is a very long walk. We never saw it. My grandma finally decided to ask someone, so she went in the nearest store and asked for directions. The cashier pointed in the direction that we came from and told us it was about a 20 minute walk. My grandma and I sighed, but we continued on with our journey…

When we found BHS Ltd, we were annoyed to see that while we turned right onto Princes, we should have turned left. It was like the second store to the left! It was also disappointing because they didn’t have anything there that I liked. We decided to head across the street to the Princes Mall, which had a lot of interesting stores, including New Look. It turned out to be my kind of store – shirts and shoes with bright colors at reasonable prices. I found this awesome shirt – it’s black with rainbow neon stars and paint splatters all over it.

We also found this T-Shirt printing store, where you can make your own T-Shirt. My friend and I designed this pair of jeans one afternoon (during science class…:)) and I thought that it’d be awesome that instead of writing all over my jeans and getting in trouble, that I put our design on a T-Shirt. It’s kind of complicated and has all of these inside jokes and drawings on it, but the T-Shirt place said that they could make it. It would just take a while, and they’d have to ship it overseas to the U.S. My grandma and I think that it’s perfectly reasonable, considering that it’s only a little bit extra for shipping, but I still haven’t gotten around to convincing my mom…

My grandma and I headed up all of these streets and shopped a lot. We finally returned to our hotel, exhausted. She watched the news and I read. At about 5:00, we walked down Queens Street to meet my mom. She was tired too. Since we were all so tired, we decided to order pizza instead of going out to dinner like we usually did. As we ate our pizza, we watched TV and I went on the Internet to talk to my friends back in Michigan.

After we ate, I reluctantly packed my suitcase. My grandma and mom did the same thing. None of us want to leave – we all love it here. I feel right at home here in the city, I think I’m a city girl at heart. I felt the same way in New York City. Even though none of us wanted to pack, we knew that we had to because we have to wake up at 5:00 tomorrow and it’s very expensive to stay here in Edinburgh.

Abby’s Oversea Adventure: Day 5

Well, day five of my trip is still going on. Right now I’m on the plane back to the U.S., typing this up. Right now we’re flying over the ocean, and since there’s some turbulence, it’s a little scary. It’s daytime so I can actually see the ocean this time. Right now, I’m looking out the window trying the see if I can see any sharks or dolphins or whales from this high. It’s hopeless, I know, considering I’m about 34,000 feet above sea level. But I’m trying anyway. The clouds look like cotton candy, and it’s so pretty from up here except for the fact that I can see some pollution. I can see some smog and smoke from up here, which is kind of depressing. Geez, the plane just lurched again. I hate flying with turbulence, I get scared really easily. It’s kind of weird, because I love flying, but I hate it. I love the view, the flying sensation, and just being up so high, but I hate it because you never know what can happen. Plus there’s always that one person who annoys the crap out of you. Luckily, I don’t have any more snorers on this flight!

Well, I’m going to stop blogging now. The ocean and the clouds are giving me new inspiration for a poem or two, which I’ll add to the site if they’re good!