Well Semana Santa was so long ago now that I hardly remember what happened! I shall just write the highlights in order to catch up.
Tuesday March 30: Last day in London. We went to Westminster Abbey, the National Gallery, and had tea at this really fancy tea place that wouldn't let us take pictures. That night we saw Chicago, which was a mistake because Chicago is a very American musical and the Brits just don't have the accent quite right.
Wednesday March 31: Spent all day on the bus from London to Edinburgh. It was a 10 hour trip, but it didn't seem that long for some reason. It was really cool to see all the English countryside as we went by. We got to Edinburgh and checked into our hostel, which was a great find. Called Castle Rock Hostel, it was voted the #1 hostel in Scotland for 2009, and with good reason! The rooms and bathrooms were very clean, the people were very friendly, and the location couldn't be better-right at the base of the... rock...that the castle was on! That night we did a "Ghost Tour" which was a walking tour around some of the haunted parts of Edinburgh. Our tour guide was a crazy Canadian girl named Kate who told us lots of very entertaining stories.
Thursday April 1: We did a free walking tour of Edinburgh during the day, also with Kate the crazy Canadian. It was a 4-hour long tour but for some reason it didn't seem that long! We went all around the city and learned some really interesting things that I'm not going to recount because a) I don't remember a lot of them and b) I'm supposed to be just writing the highlights. I forget what we did that afternoon but I'm sure it was fun. That night, we did a tour of a "close," which is somebody's former house in an underground city!
Friday April 2: Started the day with a tour of Edinburgh Castle: definitely worth it, although the lack of student discounts was disappointing. Then we walked all the way down the Royal Mile (the main tourist street in the Old Town of Edinburgh that has the Castle on one end and the Palace of Holyrood House on the other) to go to the palace. As our luck would have it, we happened to be there on one of the 3 days that the Palace is closed during the year (Christmas, Boxing Day, and Good Friday), so we couldn't go in. Fortunately, I noticed a large mountain behind the palace that people appeared to be hiking up, so I convinced Courtney that it would be a fun idea to hike up a mountain instead of visiting the palace. She agreed, and we started climbing up the very muddy slope of what I later learned was an extinct volcano. The views of Edinburgh from the top of Arthur's Seat (the name of the mountain-volcano thing) were absolutely incredible! Plus, I was so tired from the hiking that I was more than happy to sit on the bus for another 9ish hours that night on the way back to London.
Saturday April 3: Got to London Victoria Station at about 6 am. Took a train to the airport, sat there for a couple hours, and then flew back to Málaga! All in all a very successful trip with no travel glitches like the last time!
Sunday April 4: Easter! Holy week (Semana Santa) in Spain is a huge deal, but Easter is surprisingly not a big deal. I went to Easter Mass at the "cathedral" in Córdoba (the Mezquita with the cathedral in it) because 2 of my friends who are not Catholic wanted to go to church on Easter and they wanted someone to go with them who would know what to do so they wouldn't stand out. They didn't really need to worry about that though, because most of the people there were tourists and quite a few of them were definitely not Catholic. Other than that, I didn't do anything Easter-like except eat a chocolate Cadbury egg that I had bought in London.
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