Penguins and Volcanoes

Today was much more eventful than yesterday. I got up at 8 this morning to go to the zoo. About 50 of us met in front of the International Student Center to take the bus over to the zoo (about 2 1/2 miles outside of the city). When we got there, it was cold and rainy and there was nobody there except us. Alison and I wandered around and didn't see anyone else for most of the time. The weather was bad at the beginning and a lot of the animals weren't out, but the zoo was really beautiful. It's built on a hill with a stunning view of the snowy mountains and the valley below.

The penguins were probably the highlight of the visit (other than the scenery). The Edinburgh Zoo has the largest penguin pool in the world, and there are A LOT of penguins. One of those penguins is Sir Nils Olav, a king penguin, who is an honorary colonel-in-chief of the King's Guard in the Norwegian army. There's also a penguin that's only several months old and he looks ridiculous. Grey and fluffy. Every day at 2:15 there's a Penguin Parade, when the penguins are let out of their pen to go for a stroll, but since we got to the zoo early we didn't want to sit around for and extra 2 hours waiting for the parade. We were disappointed though, because that sounded cool. Look it up on youtube, it's quite cute.

There are a few pictures from the zoo on my facebook, but here are a few as well:

The bus ride back from the zoo was fun because it went through New Town a bit. I've really only seen Princes Street in New Town so it was fun seeing more of it. The weather was so lovely when we got back that I decided it would be a good time to go up Arthur's Seat, a huge extinct volcano in the middle of Edinburgh. You can see it from anywhere in the city and it looks awesome. None of my friends wanted to go because they thought it would be too cold or icy, so I decided to go by myself. Luckily, as I was leaving my building, I heard 2 girls talking about how they were about to go up Arthur's seat so I asked if I could join them. We had a group of about 12 and we walked toward the volcano.

The hike up to the top was rough because it's pretty treacherous to begin with, then you add ice and it was slow going. We all made it though and the view was phenomenal. Absolutely amazing. I put a ton of pictures on my faceboook so you can look at pictures there (please do! It was amazing!), but here are a few videos I took at different points along the climb to give you an idea (refresh the page if the videos don't work when you press play):

Now where do we go?:

It's getting bigger as we get closer:

Getting ready to climb:

Do we need to go higher? It's pretty right here:

Almost there:

The very top:

And finally, here are some pictures of me :-):

Remember to check out the pictures on my facebook!

From the top you can see the ocean, the Firth of Forth, the castle, the palace, mountains, and every other landmark. The sunset from up there must be amazing. It sets right behind the mountains. I'm definitely doing that when it gets warmer! We spent plenty of time at the top, then we climbed back down which wasn't as bad as we thought it would be.

I went back to my flat after that (stopping at the grocery store on the way), took a shower, ate dinner (I was starving. I didn't have lunch when I got back from the zoo then I climbed a mountain), and wrote this blog. I walked/hiked for like 8 hours today so I'm pretty exhausted but I might go to The Big Cheese tonight. The Big Cheese is held weekly at a bar on campus and they play really cheesy music from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. How could that not be fun? We'll see how I feel in a few hours.

Tomorrow we're going to the National Gallery of Scotland and I will finally do some reading for class next week! Maybe.