Planning!

Hi again!

These past few days I've been planning the rest of my stay in the UK, and trust me, I'd rather have 20 essays to write! In any case, I'm leaving for the Isle of Skye tomorrow at... 4.45am! Together with Chiara, I'll travel from Edinburgh to Glasgow and then from Glasgow to Portree (city on the Isle of Skye):


Arriving at 1pm we are going to hike our way to a hostel in Uig, which lies on the western coast and is indicated on the map by the green arrow:


On the 16th of May, we will stay and explore the mountains to the east of Uig, and on the 17th we plan on walking back to Portree but taking the longer coastal route: head to the northern-most point of the island and then carry on along the eastern coast until we reach Portree; however, this is quite an ambitious plan and it is by no means certain we will be able to carry it out. Still, I'm an optimistic person, so I think we can do this!

Annavera will also be in Portree then, and on the 18th we will be sleeping in and wait for Vilhelm to join us too. The rest of the 18th we will probably head to the east or south of Portree, and on the 19th Joost will arrive.

On the 20th Chiara and I will unfortunately have to head back to Edinburgh, so the highland adventure will be quite short for us.

On the 21st I will spend a day in Edinburgh (watching sunrise from Arthur's Seat - an old plan never come true), but on the 22nd I'm heading to Manchester to stay there for a few days to attend the Manchester Phonology Meeting (yay! I'm really looking forward to it!). Although I could find lodgings for the 22-24th, my hostel was booked for the night of the 24th and I still need to find a place to stay. However, I think I will be staying somewhere near the Yorkshire Dales, so I can cross these on the 25th in order to catch a train to Newcastle where I will be staying until the 27th. Klaas is kind enough to pick me up in Newcastle on either the 25th or 26th and we will explore Newcastle for a bit. The 27th we will return to Edinburgh to stay there until the 29th, and then it will be time to say farewell to Edinburgh.. but let's not think about that for now! On the 29th Klaas and I will go to see the Lake District and in the evening we will stay in Manchester, which we are going to explore on the 30th, with possibly taking a break in Stoke-On-Trent. On the 31st our journey to Dover really begins: hopefully we will have enough time to visit Stratford-upon-Avon, Oxford and Canterbury before we catch our boat in Dover, which will take us to the mainland (Calais), from where we will drive home.

All this means I will have very little time and will largely be unavailable (it will be hard to kick the habit of checking my e-mail every hour but I will survive); I do not know when I will have time to keep you more up-to-date, so I figured I might just as well tell you now :).

Now it's very late (11.30pm) and I still have to prepare the sandwiches for our journey tomorrow, pack by bag (travelling light!), as well as figuring out how to walk from Portree to Uig.. so I will have to leave you for now.

Take care!

Cheers,
b

Tourist Incompetence Centre

I hate the Tourist Incompetence Centre in Edinburgh. For all those travelling around in Scotland, I advise you to become a member of the SYHA (Scottish Youth Hostel Association); membership is free for students and you get discounts at hostels but -more importantly- on low-cost public transport (e.g. citylink). Such information cannot be obtained at the TIC, so I thought I might as well jot it down here.

"There is no room" ~ "There is no space"

I'd forgotten this interesting bit of research I'd performed a few weeks ago (on 5:01am Monday, Apr 14):

Interestingly, a 'regular' google search (google.co.uk) reveals twice as many hits for "there is no space" than for "there is no room", whereas scholar.google.co.uk shows the exact opposite pattern.

Weird words: Struthonian

(stru'thonian)
Tending to hide one's head in the sand.

This is a modern weird word, used a few times after the late Arthur
Koestler invented it in 1963, but now almost unknown. His aim, in
an article in Encounter magazine, was to describe those pundits who
prefer honest self-deception to ignoble truths.

You may recall that there is an animal famed for its in-sand head-
burying, so you won't be surprised to learn that "struthonian" is
from Latin "struthio", an ostrich. Related to it is the standard -
albeit technical - English "struthious", of or like an ostrich.

An ancient, rare and defunct name for the ostrich, by the way, was
"struthiocamel", from the Latin "struthiocamelus". The Romans took
it wrongly from Greek "strouthokamelos", literally "sparrow camel"
or, more loosely, "camel-bird" (the scientific name of the ostrich
to this day is Struthio camelus). It's difficult to imagine a cross
between a sparrow and a camel, but the Greeks managed it. In later
Latin it became "avis struthio", the struthio bird.

Botanic Gardens @ Edinburgh

Hi again!

Apparently, I'm in full blogging mode. Today I went with Annavera to the Edinburgh botanic garden, which are situated in the north of the study (beyond Princes Street). Hahaha - I mean north of the city! How's that for a Freudian slip!

In any case, the Edinburgh garden is part of the Royal Botanic Garden of Scotland; it was founded in 1670 and is the second oldest botanic garden in Britain after Oxford's. However, the garden moved to its present location at Inverleith in 1820.

Before we walked to the Botanics, we had a hot potato at Princes Street Gardens:


The rock garden at the Botanics was truly beautiful! A selection from some of the pictures I shot:




Such wonderful colours:




One more of the rock garden:


And one more of the colours:


Trees are irresistible to climb - everyone knows that!




Previous statement buttressed by Annavera:



Anna went all biology on me:


Close-up:


A strange tree, which looks as if it was running away but grabbed by a big hand and put head-first into the ground; use your imagination, you'll see it too!


View from underneath a tree that goes up, up, up!


Rhododendron:


The most remarkable about this picture is the colour of the sky; the purplish blue is a result of the camera rather than a faithful replication of reality.


Close-up of the same flower:


There was also an elaborate greenhouse complex with various plants (the fact that some pictures are dim/misty is due to the high humidity, which caused the lens to mist up).
I think all of the flowers below are orchids (speciaal voor jou JR!):





Look at those huge leaves!


More interesting plants:




The following one reminded me of the skeletal representations used in chemistry:


There were some fish which made my skin crawl (hence they are excluded from the pictures on this weblog); Anna like them though, so they deserve to be mentioned.

Beautiful waterfall:


Vanilla plant:


Doesn't this picture make you wish you were a frog?


An odd flower, which was shaped as if it was a rose; however, it was very compact and certainly not a rose.


There were very many squirrels; surprisingly, they weren't afraid at all. However, these grey ones are evil little creatures as they have chased away all the brown ones, which are now nearly extinct in Scotland:


After a long day, we took a break at a very cosy place which turned out to be a Polish-Scottish tea house! We were very relieved to sit down for a bit and had tea ...


... and chocolate cake!


Finally, on the way home, I saw this restaurant! Needless to say, Camino Leiden is a much more pleasant spot :)


Now, it's again almost 2am and tomorrow I have to get up early as it's museum day! Yay!

Cheers for now!
Beata


"Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all others is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders" -- A.E. Housman On application of thought to textual criticism

sunny, sunnier, sunniest

Hello!!

The good weather is continuing and everybody is getting outside enjoying the sun as much as possible. Some of us poor students still need to study for exams, but others -including yours truly- are free to roam the city. In the morning I went to a picnic in the meadows, organised by some international students.

In the afternoon Annavera & Bruno and me moved to sunbathe on the slope of Arthur's Seat.





In the evening Annavera and me drummed up some friends to join us for a barbecue party at the hermitage, which was a huge success. The food was lovely (Annavera (paraphrased): 'I love to eat the meat with my hands, it feels good to go back to basics!'), the company charming and the surroundings enthralling.

On our way to the hermitage:


Drowsing in the sun:


The perfect picnic/barbecue:




We finished the day with tea and three kinds of ice-cream: a muddy pool of chocolate, a mountain ridge of vanilla and a raked garden of strawberry. Sweet Edinburgh summer!

Cheers for now & I'm saying good night: sleep tight & don't let the bag pipes bite!

red blotches & sprung blood vessels a.k.a. a Scots tan

Hi there!

Today was a beautiful day - summer has finally made its way to Scotland! Although I was starting to believe that there was no such season as 'summer' up here, I have been proven wrong (luckily).

I went to the King's Buildings (KB, which houses the natural sciences complex (down south from where I live) to visit Annavera, who is studying for her exams. She suggested that I would go on to the hermitage situated next to the KB -- and I was smart enough to take her advice (thanks so much Anna!!). From their website, "The Hermitage of Braid and Blackford Hill lie under the Braid Hills between Morningside and Liberton. This Local Nature Reserve was the first to be designated in Edinburgh in 1993 and offers a wide range of walks from a leisurely stroll along the Braid Burn to a steep climb on the slopes of Blackford Hill. [...] The range of habitats includes 160 acres of mixed mature woodland, scrubland, grassland, The Braid Burn and wetland which all provide a haven for wildlife. Listen for green woodpecker calling from the top of the tall Beech trees. If you are lucky, you could startle a fox hunting rabbits or even an otter swimming in the burn! [... Some of] the amazing birdlife you will encounter; herons, kestrels, kingfishers, song thrush and even tawny owls can be regularly seen around the Nature Reserve!"

In the morning I walked through the grassland and scrubland, and in the woodland I took a short break and read a bit under the trees (The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brian; a very odd book that I enjoyed reading very much, but I wouldn't advise it to everybody, however, if you love Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass (Lewis Carroll) you might try your hand at this darker version). On my way back to the King's Buildings I -unsurprisingly- got lost, but in the end I managed to find my way onto the industrial estate like area of the KB (on my own!). It proved to be another challenge altogether to get back to the Darwin Library where Annavera was studying; although I'd been there twice before I had to give up and ask for directions. After a refreshing lunch, I went back but most of my energy was spent and I decided to finish my book instead. Having done that I simply lay on my back enjoying the sun.. drowsiness fell over me and I lay half-dreaming about bicycles (related to The Third Policeman), birds (they were chirping over my head), and my upcoming essay (on a subject I'm not going to bother you with). At last, I decided to head back, but not before I'd had a lovely ice-cream break with Annavera (most of you will know about it but for me it was a wonderful discovery to find that there's Magnums covered in plain chocolate).
When I got home, I could witness the profit of today's hard work: red blotches & sprung blood vessels a.k.a. a Scots tan. :)

Cheers,
Beata

P.S. As always, I forgot to bring my camera, but I am sure to return there and I will take pictures.