Weekends Away

Last weekend was Halloween but instead of having a spooky night in Edinburgh, I decided to take a last minute trip with my flatmate Caoimh and her law friends Anke, Alex, and Meghan to the Highlands! Their programme had reading week and I'm not a huge fan of Halloween anyway. It was just an overnight trip with a group called MacBackpackers. We left early Saturday morning and headed north.

Our first stop was a town outside Birnam Woods, as made famous by Shakespeare's MacBeth, where Beatrix Potter used to holiday.

"Macbeth shall never vanquished be until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill Shall come against him."
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4.1

We got our lunches in town and walked around. There was an awesome cathedral which was half functioning, half in ruins. The cathedral is situated by the lovely River Tay.

Our next stop was the Hermitage, which is pretty much a nice park. There were lovely paths and a waterfall.

After that we travelled to Ruthven Barracks. Scotland was having a typical ten minute pouring session as we approached the barracks so we all got soaked walking up but it left us with a beautiful rainbow!

Following that we went to Clava Cairns which are 4000 year old ruins believed to have been used when humans worshipped nature and the sun and the moon. Now they're just piles of rocks.

We then stopped at the Culloden Battlefield for tea. This is where a lot of Highlanders died fighting the British. It was really sad to see all the markers for the mass graves for individual clans.

We ended the day at the shores of Loch Ness by the little town of Dores. Sorry, no monster spotted! Everyone was invited to swim in the waters, which were freezing. The only people brave enough to do it were Alex and Anke who changed into their swim suits and rain in. Caoimh and Meghan took their shoes off and waded in. I was happy enough to dip my finger in - it was ice cold! *Applause* to them.

We spent the night at a hostel in Inverness and had a lovely dinner at a place called The Castle Tavern(?). On Sunday morning we stopped at Loch Ness again. We drove along the Loch for a bit and took pictures of Urquhart Castle, a lovely ruin along the shores.

We took a few photo stops along the way back south including Falls of Foyer and Glen Coe, the site of a mass murder of a clan. We also stopped in Stirling to see the William Wallace Monument.

Hamish, the Hairy Coo

It really was a wonderful time! The girls I went with were really nice and made me feel welcome.

Yesterday, we made a trip out to Glasgow. It was me, Mags, Sophie, and Caoimh. We took the train out and spent three hours shopping at a wonderful, cheap, store called Primark. Then we took a tea break and met Sophie's friend Tasha. Then we did a little more shopping and met up with Matt, who came in later, for a drink. We had dinner at Wagamomma (joined by Danny) and then met up with Sophie's uni friends for drinks. A lovely, lovely time to be had and lots of bargains to be found!

A Tip on Tipping

As I mentioned in my last Dianna's Dash of Different Diction post, I wanted to let you all know about tipping in the United Kingdom. It's quite different here than in the United States where, in my opinion, tipping is a large part of society and is expected. Here are some examples:

-In America, if you're given a tour, you would tip the tour guide if they're good. Here no one tipped the tour guide (see the upcoming post on the trip I took to Loch Ness).

-In America, if you take a taxi, the driver waits for you to give them a tip. Here they run/drive off before you can give them one. For taxis, I usually just round up my fare and tell them to keep the change. If I don't have exact change and they give me money back, it's their loss because they usually drive away right after I had them my change. But I especially try to give them a tip if they helped me with any luggage.

-In America, waiters and waitresses rely on tips. They get paid a really low salary and make all of their income on what you leave behind for them based on their service. In general, you can give someone around 15%. I usually give that on average but more likely I'll give 20%. If they were extremely horrible and rude, I will leave 10%. In the UK, 10% is more like what you leave behind. As a former waitress, t's really hard sometimes for me to leave only 10% but my friends always give me my money back when I try to leave more.

-You don't tip the grocery delivery man who carries your groceries all the way to your flat for you.

Those are all of the examples I can think of now. If you have any questions about other situations, leave a comment and I'll ask my flatmates!

There's Been A Murder...And It Be A Mystery

On Saturday my flatmates and I attended a murder mystery party our friend Danny had written. Since he didn't know us when he wrote it, we didn't get parts so we played as actors. I went as Dina Mite, Caoimh went as June Facepunch, Sophie went as Silver McStabsqwik, and Mags, who had a role, was Scarlet Monroe.

It was a lot of fun! It was great because everyone actually dressed up. Usually you get a lot of slackers but everyone put a lot of effort into their costumes which was awesome! We didn't stay too long after the mystery was solved (until about 12:30/1) because we were all really tired and we were meeting Sophie's aunt for lunch the next day.

Her aunt lives in the town of Penicuik which is about 10 miles outside of Edinburgh. We had a lovely three course meal of melon and cherries, a sausage casserole with rice, peppers, apricots, carrots, and mushrooms, and for dessert we had strawberry and blackberry crumble and strawberry trifle. It was all so yummy! It was wonderful to have a home cooked meal and it felt so homey in her house with its little gas fireplace (there was heat! it was so warm!). We then went on a walk around Penicuik House. I took some pictures with my phone for the first time. I'm really pleased with the quality but the colouring is a little off and I couldn't get it to zoom. I'll have to play around with it more.

Dianna's Weekly Dash of Different Diction

Welcome to this week's Dash of Different Diction. Sorry we're a bit late this week. It wasn't on my calendar to write it so I forgot! Today's word is take away. When you're in a restaurant here, instead of being asked "Here or to-go" you'll be asked "sit in or take away". So, essentially, take away is synonymous with to-go. There is also a difference in pricing between sit in and take away. Sitting in is always a bit more expensive even for something as simple as coffee from Starbucks. When you sit in there they usually give you a non-disposable cup.

Speaking of eating, tipping is different in the UK compared to the US. Stay tuned for next week. Instead of a word, we'll go over tipping!

Happy Birthday To Me!

On Friday, the 15th, I celebrated my 24th birthday. It wasn't anything too special. My flatmate, Sophie, made me cupcakes.

I opened my presents from my mom and dad, which I'd been holding on to for a few weeks and they consisted of the sequel to Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber (VERY good series! Hopefully the second book will continue that way. No idea when I'll have time to read it since I still haven't gotten to Mockingjay, the last book in the Hunger Games Trilogy), and the DVD Letters to Juliet. They also gave me some pounds to spend as I please. Isn't that nice?! I plan on buying some nice boots with it. My flatmates were really nice and got me cards as well. Caoimh got me a pretty necklace and Sophie got me a PostSecret book since I had been spying on hers.

I had a fairly laid back day. I didn't do anything different than usual (which means lying around watching tv and reading for school). We had people over to our flat and I wore my lovely birthday dress that I'd bought. Unfortunately, I had way too much wine to drink (probably over a bottle and a half in under 3 hours) and by the time we went out to Espionage to go dancing, I was done in. I left early, went home, and made good friends with my bed. This picture is me and my flatmate. I was struggling to be awake and alive at this point. I look wrecked (my mother kindly phrased it "toasted" when she saw them!) in almost every photo.

Saturday I was pretty much dead to the world with a hangover like no other and sat in my bed feeling sorry for myself, swearing off alcohol, and watching Project Runway. I managed to get up around 5pm, eat something, and walk to a bar where my friend Danny was having his belated birthday celebration.

In other news, fall has officially begun! Okay, the weather has been cold here for weeks and even colder lately and nearly all the leaves have changed and started falling but I bought canned pumpkin online and made my first batch of pumpkin goodies on Thursday. I make pumpkin chocolate chip muffins with a cream cheese center. Yum, yum, yum they were so good!

Not up to much this week except more classes and readings! However I have begun to piece together my costume for a certain pirate party I am attending on Saturday. Will possibly be awesome. Arrrrrrrrrrr.

Dianna's Weekly Dash of Different Diction

Welcome to this week's Dash of Different Diction. Today's word is bagsy. This is just a cute little phrase equivalent to "dibs" in the US. If you want something and have to pick it before everyone else, you bagsy it. Example:

1. If you're having a potluck with your friends, and you'd want to bring dessert, you'd say "Bagsy pudding".

Dianna's Weekly Dash of Different Diction

Welcome to this week's Dash of Different Diction. Today's word is pudding. Now, I know you know what pudding here but they sometimes use it different here. Here is a really good description from Wikipedia.

"In the United Kingdom and some Commonwealth countries, pudding refers to rich, fairly homogeneous starch (or dairy) based desserts such as rice pudding and Christmas pudding, or, informally, any dessert. The word is also used for savoury dishes such as Yorkshire pudding, black pudding, and steak and kidney pudding.

In the United States, pudding characteristically denotes a sweet milk-based dessert similar in consistency to egg-based custards, though it may also refer to other types such as bread and rice pudding."


I decided to choose this as my word of the week in honour of all the dinner parties I've been going to! My flatmates and I have started a tradition. About three weeks ago we invited our new friends Mags, Danny, and Matt over for dinner. Then last weekend we went over to dinner at Mag's flat and this weekend we've been invited for dinner at Danny's. It's a nice Sunday dinner tradition! I hope we keep it up. But that's how my new word was learned. Sophie offered to bring cupcakes for pudding. The phrase threw me off completely when I first heard it! I said cupcakes FOR pudding? How does that happen? And then she kindly explained to me that pudding just meant dessert. Yum!

These are the cupcakes Sophie made! Don't they look delicious? (Trust me, they were!) They were almost too pretty to eat! The one on the right is chocolate with Baileys flavoured butter cream icing. YUM!