UK

Pointing out landmarks from the London Eye, including Parliament and Big Ben, above, and the Snowdon Mountain Railway makes its way up to the top, below. (Click here for a full gallery).

As previously reported, my recent trip to the UK was a great time. Usually on 2-week trips I get sort of anxious near the end to get back to my life, my work, my bed, etc., but on the move I felt great and would happily have kept going deeper into Scotland for another 2 weeks instead of returning home. It was just the 3 of us (my sister Amy, brother Michael, and I) with a basic plan of getting from London to Edinburgh in a roundabout way, trying to act more as travelers than tourists.

First stop: London. Though I really wanted to see London, I was immediately excited to leave it behind as soon as we landed on our first day. We stuck around for 2 days (laughably not long enough for people who aren't on a mission) doing most of what you'd expect: Tower of London, London Eye, parks, British Museum, pubs, pints, Tate Modern, St. Paul's, bridges. Luckily my college friend Megan happened to send me a note just before we left on the trip, and it was great to meet up with her, colleagues, and hubby to do some quality drinking (thanks babe!).

The morning of our 3rd day we made our way to Heathrow to rent a car (thanks so much London Underground for closing the Piccadilly Line... yes, fine, the subway in England is much cleaner than NYC, but who really cares since it never works!) for the second leg of the journey. I was pretty nervous about driving, wrong-sided-ness and all of that, and so happily got the full coverage insurance and an automatic (I drive a manual normally)... but holy shit wasn't that an expensive idea. And yes, let me pause here to say... the UK is hilariously, laugh out loud, then sob in your hands like a baby expensive right now, comparative to the U.S. dollar. Right, well, anyway... we got a car, a very fancy one (the only automatic they had as it turns out, despite our reservation), and struck a past West.

Ah, yes, going West, as young men and women. So romantic... if only the entire country wasn't so small and filled with weekenders pouring out of the city. We made our way for Stonehenge as I got acclimated to British driving, and left the decision in Mikey's hands as whether or not we would actually stop. He wisely chose to peek from the road (because its RIGHT next to the highway, strangely) and so we sped off refreshed at moving on to our destination for the day: Bath.

A resort town for hundreds of years because of its natural hot springs, and thus its name, Bath is just about the most boring place imaginable for a 16-year old kid like my brother. You basically can check out the Roman Baths and Abbey, eat something, and then you are done, and even then the baths are actually pretty lame. For some reason I thought the baths would be really, really interesting, but no... lame. I can see where with a big group of friends interested in just hanging out and drinking, Bath would be really great. But for our purposes, after a few short hours we were ready to head on.

We woke up the next morning outside of Cardiff and started heading to Northern Wales, which would become our favorite place during the whole trip. A large road soon became a small one, and then my trusty Nuvi (invaluable on this adventure) guided us to road A4459 heading NW towards the water. Calling A4459 a road is really, really misguided. It is more of a very narrow horse-cart path winding incredibly and beautiful up through forests, down vast pastures, and around tiny, tiny hamlets and farms. It was probably greatest driving experience of my life, and this is from someone who loves to drive. Eventually A4459 moved us to the ocean and we stopped for the first time that day to look over the water and cliffs dotted with sheep and horses.

For the next 2 days we drove and climbed all over Northern Wales, stopping at incredible castles, heading to the summit of Snowdon, and stocking up on local ales at the Super Tesco near our hotel. Though Caernarfon Castle is cool and not to be missed, we actually preferred Harlech Castle, further down the coast, which was much smaller and way less tourist friendly (thus allowing you to imagine yourself back in time way more easily). The journey up Snowdonia in the rack and pinion railway cars was cool, but our best moment came the last night when we drove out to Holy Island and watched the sunset over the rocks of a beach park outside of Holyhead, drinking a large delicious bottle of Wychcraft as the sun finally sank into the water and Ireland and the Isle of Man on the horizon.

Our last car trip took us back into England and over to York, which was another town not that interesting to my brother. Especially annoying is the beautifully gothic York Minster, whose trip to the top was expensive, exhausting, and totally worthless (the entire top of the tower is covered in chicken wire that is barely tall enough for me to stand up straight under). For most people over the age of 16, though, York is pretty charming with its narrow streets of shopping and pretty scenics on the river. We spent most of the night in a pub near our hotel playing monopoly (I won) and drinking pints of beer and coke (despite REPEATED efforts, Mikey did not taste a single drop of beer or whiskey on the trip... I guess there are worse things).

We hopped on the train the next morning heading for 3 days at our final destination: Edinburgh. Amy and I planned the trip so that we'd end up in a place that we thought would be really cool, and we were exactly right. Edinburgh is a great city, old and new, with tons to do and climb, and an energy in the air. The first day we climbed up to Arthur's Seat at Holyrood Park (have you picked up on the theme of climbing to the top of things?) and looked out over the entire region, seeing for dozens of miles. The descent had an unfortunate casualty, though, and my brand new flask safely tucked in my back pocket (with a lovely thistle right on the front) will never be the same for my short fall down a stupidly steep path. Luckily the Dalwhinnie I had filled it with was safe and sound.

The other two days passed in a similar happy way... trips to the castle (surprisingly lame), museums (the Whiskey museum was actually really cool), shops (finally some thinking about what to bring home as gifts). We climbed to the top of Carlton Hill, we ate some really wonderful food (Edinburgh is having a huge resurgence of dining apparently) that was all the better for the incredible amount of pub food we'd eaten previously (try Stac Polly (modern Scottish) on St. Mary's St). And on the last day we took a train out to North Berwick (a small coastal village) where Ross (a very cool friend of a friend) had welcomed us to show us around some of where he grew up. After the sites we set up for a lot more pints, many hands of cards, and a lesson in how to understand cricket, we took the last train home to Edinburgh. The next morning our trip ended with the long flight home, complete with delays in Atlanta. Ah, home, sweet home.

A foggy view of the North Sea coast, below, from a window in Tantallon Castle near North Berwick, Scotland.

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