Of breweries, and castles, and things

Here's some wonderful pictures taken by yours truely (and of yours truely) over spring break. Traveling alone has forced me to become quite good and streching my arm out in front of me and taking a picture of myself with some famous monument in the background.

http://travel.webshots.com/album/570386963QhQdbS

Enjoy.

The Queen is Home

My spring break was a nice tour of the United Kingdom: Dublin, Edinburgh, and London (again). I visited Dublin first, taking a bus tour of the city on the first day. I took a tour of the Guiness Factory, visited a few cathedrals, a castle...the next day I continued my doing of touristy things and visited Trinity College and St. Stephan's Green, in addition to souvenir shop hopping. Dublin is the home to many, MANY sheep souvenirs, and I had a hard time decided which sheep souvenir was the cutest and had to stop myself from buying too much. I then took an extremely early flight to Edinburgh. Beautiful city! I joined a walking tour my first day there and heard of the famous STONE OF DESTINY!! This amazing stone is kept in the collection of Crown Jewels of Scotland and it was interesting to see. Jeweled sword, decorated crown...large rock. Very ugly and unspecial hunk of rock. The specialness of this stone is based in history and lore: the Scottish kings for the past hundreds of years have been crowned sitting upon this rock. Funnily enough, the English decided it was a good idea to steal this rock and start crowning their kings and queens upon it. It was only within the past few years that Queen Elizabeth returned the Stone of Destiny back to the Scottish. My second day I went castle hopping and visited Edinburgh Castle and the Palace of Holyrood. I continued onto London by taking a train that offered free wifi internet within the cars--cool! I LOVE London and this was one of the main reasons I went back. There were a few touristy things that I did not have the time to do the last time I visited, so I made sure I visited Westminister Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, and the Changing of the Guard this time around. I spent a good deal of time in Camden Town. The majority of Camden Town is markets and the maze of stalls amused me for a long time. I took another early flight back to Italy on my last day of break, and then finished my break relaxing in my room, sorting my purchases and unpacking. I would love to go back to Britain again...what a country!