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All About Edinburgh

We managed to do so much in Scotland that I had to break it up over multiple blogs! We spent the most time in Edinburgh, so I think it deserved its own post. That being said, Edinburgh was absolutely stunning. It’s definitely one of my new favorite cities–I could’ve spent weeks there! We stayed near the Royal Mile, a stretch of the old town filled with bagpipes, kilts, and whiskey shops, capped on either end by Edinburgh Castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse. The old town

In the Edinburgh vaults…

definitely has a dark vibe–the grey stone buildings, narrow alleys (known as closes), and almost constant cloudy skies alone contributes to that, but when you learn about the sinister history of the city (think grave robbers, underground crime cities, public torture and execution…) it’s even more chilling. I always thought ghost tours seemed cheesy and theatrical, but we took took one into a series of underground chambers called the Edinburgh vaults, and it was absolutely terrifying.

On top of Arthur’s Seat

The scary underground of Edinburgh was a must-see, but the hills around the city were even better. The best view of the old town has to be from Calton Hill, which takes less than ten minutes to reach the top of and is gorgeous at sunset. For the more adventurous there’s Arthur’s Seat, an extinct volcano overlooking Holyrood Palace–some legends even say it was the site of King Arthur’s Camelot. It took us a little under an hour to reach the official summit, which was quite snowy and rocky. On a clear day you can see for miles, out over the sea to the east of the city and even the beginnings of the Highlands to the north.

Victoria Street

The bathrooms at Elephant House Cafe

Edinburgh is also where J.K Rowling wrote a lot of the Harry Potter books, and all around the city you can see where she took inspiration. The Elephant House Cafe is a now-famed spot where she would sit and write, and if you ever go there to eat, it’s worth checking the bathrooms–they’re covered in Harry Potter graffiti. Not too far away (and right next to our hostel as it happened), Greyfriars Kirkyard cemetery has a McGonagall, a Moody, and even a Tom Riddell buried there (and was also home to a dog called Bobby, whose story is so adorable and sweet it’ll make you forget all about Edinburgh’s dark history–check it out!). Victoria Street was also said to be the inspiration for Diagon and Knockturn Alleys, and we went into an antique store that I would definitely believe was the inspiration for Borgin and Burkes.

My next post will be about the side trips we took to the Scottish Borders and the Kingdom of Fife! Stay tuned! 🙂

Location: edinburgh

What I Ate: Scotland Edition

While writing my previous blog about my trip to Scotland, I realized that if I was going to talk about all of the food I ate then it would’ve been a mile long, so I decided to dedicate an entire post to all of the delicious (and not so delicious) things I tried while up north:

Haggis:

Haggis balls featuring Irn Bru: basically Scotland in a nutshell

Probably the most infamous of British dishes, Haggis is the lovely Scottish delicacy that consists of minced sheep’s pluck (heart, lungs, and liver), oats, and spices. It’s unfortunate that I knew what it was when I went to take my first bite, because if I hadn’t I probably would’ve gone in for a second. We ordered it as an appetizer, so it came in little fried balls rather than in the traditional sheep’s stomach casing (which was fine by me)…and it was not terrible. I only took one bite, but at the fault of my brain and not my tastebuds. The spices were pretty tasty (they do make veggie haggis–I would try that sometime), but the texture was not especially appealing. An interesting experience, but not one I particularly want to have again.

Irn Bru:

Irn Bru earrings: in case there was any doubt of how much the Scots like this beverage

Scotland is one of the only places where Coke is not the best selling soda on the market, and it’s because of Irn Bru. A fizzy orange drink, it looks almost like Fanta, and some people say they just taste citrus when they drink it. In my opinion? It tastes like bubblegum and battery acid. It’s acidic but not in a citrus-y way and is so reminiscent of that Hubba Bubba bubble tape I used to eat in elementary school that I think it would make a way better candy than a drink. It was, however, oddly refreshing to just keep sipping–I finished my bottle.

Salmon:

Salmon

I’ve only been eating salmon for a few years, but this was by far the best I’ve ever had. Scotland is known for their salmon and I’ve just never had any that was so fresh. It was also a nice break from all the fried pub food I had been devouring!

Fish and chips!

Fish and Chips:

Fish and chips is definitely not just a Scottish thing, but the fish and chips I had there took over as THE BEST, in my opinion, fish and chips ever (a title previously held by The Codmother in San Francisco). It was in a little fishing village in the East Neuk of Fife called Anstruther, at a restaurant called Anstruther Fish Bar. The village is pretty much dead in the winter but this place was packed with locals on their lunch breaks. The fish was unreal. I’ve never had fish that was so good and fresh, and you could look out the window and see the fishing boats that brought it in. It’s about a two-hour bus ride from Edinburgh, but I believe that it’s worth making the trip for Anstruther Fish Bar alone.

Hot toddy:

Hot toddy

I’m not a huge whiskey drinker, but when in Scotland you can’t not have at least a dram. I became familiar with hot toddies at the pub down the street from my London flat, but unsurprisingly, they make them better in Scotland. A mix of hot tea, whiskey, lemon, honey, and spices, it’s the perfect winter warmer after being outside all day (and was much needed after a terrifying Edinburgh ghost tour we took)!

Brazilian Crepes:

Brazilian crepes in the making

It might seem about out of place, but when a bunch of locals told us about a food stand in Edinburgh that had the best crepes in the Scotland, we couldn’t just pass it up. Tupiniquim sells sweet and savoury Brazilian crepes, which are naturally gluten free because they have a tapioca base instead of traditional flour. We had just eaten lunch so we opted for a sweet sugar, cinnamon, and banana crepe that was out of this world. It was similar to a regular french crepe but lighter and a bit more sturdy, which made it excellent street food!

I also had an amazing dessert, but you can read about it in my post on Hot Chocolate! More about my adventures in Scotland coming soon!

Location: Edinburgh

Hot Chocolate

Dark Sugars

I’ve done a lot in the past month and a half. I could write about all the crazy things I’ve done in London, my day and weekend trips, or my life at UCL. But for some reason I really just want to talk about one thing, and that is hot chocolate. I don’t know what happened, but my friends and I have somehow found ourselves on a quest to find the best hot chocolate in London, and maybe, the UK. It all started the chocolate store Dark Sugars in Shoreditch. I’m a chocoholic. It’s my favorite food. I eat it every single day. And I’m telling you this store changed my perceptions on chocolate, and possibly even MY LIFE. Maybe it was the insane

Dark Sugars

generosity when it came to free samples (and this store isn’t exactly cheap), maybe it was trying the raw cacao beans they have in store, maybe it was the pink champagne or gin and lime truffles. But their hot chocolate is a chocoholic’s DREAM. We tried just the plain flavour (but they had several spice flavors like cinnamon and chili). They take big blocks of dark, white, and milk chocolate and chop and grate it down, mix it with warm frothy milk and cocoa powder and put even more shavings on top. When you get about halfway done it turns basically to thick, melted chocolate. This store is truly my happy place.

While I’ve yet to find a hot chocolate in London that has surpassed the one at dark sugars, that hasn’t stopped me from trying to find one. The most memorable are as follows:

Choccywoccydoodah

-Choccywoccydoodah, Soho: this place is insane–the vibe is a mix of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory, the tea party in Alice in Wonderland, and a Hot Topic. With a name like Choccywoccydoodah, we knew it had to be good and it didn’t disappoint. I got the dark chocolate and cherry hot chocolate and a slice of their six-layer taster cake. Need I say more?

Chin Chin Labs

-Chin Chin Labs, Camden Market: I’ve heard that this is the best place in London for hot chocolate–while I don’t think it topped my Dark Sugars experience, I can definitely see why it has such a good reputation. The place gets points for location alone– smack dab in the middle of Camden Lock Market, one of the best street food scenes in London, and their Nitro ice cream is supposed to be phenomenal. Their hot chocolates were delicious and not too sweet, and the dollop of bruleed marshmallow fluff on top made my day.

Mary’s Milk Bar

-Mary’s Milk Bar, Edinburgh. Okay, so this one isn’t in London, but I couldn’t not include it. This little place wasn’t far from our hostel in Edinburgh’s grassmarket neighborhood, and is Buzzfeed and Insta famous. They serve their hot chocolate as floats, with a scoop of any one of their homemade ice creams. They suggested the salted caramel. It was a good suggestion. The only thing I didn’t like about this place was their limited hours so we couldn’t come back and get it again!

Said

-Said, Soho: This was a bit of a different take, but was still great. Served in an espresso mug, this little shot of chocolate was intense and super thick, and it tasted like drinking brownie batter. Heaven.

Location: Wc1x 0hd

One Month Later…

I’ve really been slacking on my blogs. I know. I thought when I went to study abroad I would be blogging non stop, but I’ve been busier than I ever thought I would be. This is a big reason why:

This is a map of every place I’ve been since I’ve last blogged. List wise, it goes like this: Oxford, Dover, Cambridge, Salisbury, Bath, Paris, Edinburgh, Melrose, Roslin, St. Andrews, Anstruther, Pittenweem, Glasgow, Luss, Glencoe, and Fort Augustus/Loch Ness–in short, I’ve been exploring England and Scotland and I went to France for a weekend. Whew. I’ve no idea how to go about describing all the incredible things I’ve done over the past month, so I’ll give a list of a few of the highlights.

-Scotland. Just Scotland. I hope to get a blog up on my week excursion up north soon, so stay tuned!

Dover

-Climbing the Cliffs of Dover: It may have seemed like maybe not the best idea to head down to Dover in January, but the weather that day was 100% on our side–which in England means any day that is over 40 degrees and not raining! We climbed along the tops of the misty cliffs and it was absolutely breathtaking! I still haven’t gotten all of the mud off my shoes though!

-Cambridge: Cambridge is simply gorgeous. The old buildings, the boats punting along the river, and the random professors walking around in full academic regalia is an amazing change of pace from London, even if it’s only an hour away!

-Drinking the water from the Roman Baths in Bath:

Bath

don’t worry, it was the filtered stuff at the end of the museum, not the algae-riddled water in the main pools. It certainly wasn’t great–something about the taste of sulfur and iron is generally not refreshing. Did I mention it was warm?

-Theatre in London: We saw the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and Wicked in London’s famed west end–relatively inexpensive tickets are not as difficult to come by as one might expect in London!

Champagne at Louis Vuitton

-Paris: Paris isn’t a new city for me, but it was awesome to go with friends (and to get away from the pound for a while– it might not be great for the global economy but the state of the euro right now is great for a student budget). Croque monsieurs, steak frites, macarons, french onion soup, crepes, champagne, the Mona Lisa, and the Eiffel Tower at night is how I want to spend every weekend ever.

-Market Crawling: Old Spitalfields, Borough, & Camden Lock markets are a foodie’s paradise–aka my paradise. You can get full on samples alone, but it’s impossible to leave without picking up something amazing.

-Pub culture and Icebar: I’m really going to miss being able to drink when I go back to the states. Pub culture is just awesome, sitting back and enjoying a pint with friends is a great way to end a day. Some friends and I went to a bar in Soho called Icebar (I believe they have multiple locations), and everything inside was made from ice, from the bar itself to the cups we were drinking out of! A poncho and gloves were included, seeing as it was around 25 degree in there–but as chilly as it was, it’s still warmer than Penn State.

That’s all for now–cheers!

Location: wc1x 0hd

London Day 2: CIEE Orientation, Duck Tour & Everything in between

I was way too tired to post anything yesterday. That’s what a jet lag does to people, I guess. Making people massively unproductive.

Anyways today was my 2nd day in London. We walked quite a bit and figured out how to get from point A to point B by ourselves but I’m a city girl myself so the modes of transportation here aren’t too difficult to navigate. I’d love to hop on one of the double deckers soon.

We started the day with Carol’s presentation on London at one of the CIEE offices which is just a few blocks away from Citadine, our orientation hotel.

Then I, along with 3 other girls (Amber, Randal and Fatima), strolled Jubilee Gardens and watched the street performers. Their talents ranged from making huge bubbles, balancing soccor balls (they are called footballs here, if I remember correctly) and water bottles on a stick, back flipping, folding own body into a pretzel, not moving for hours on end to resemble a statue (don’t forget the bronze spray paint!), riding a 6-foot tall monocycle, getting in and out of a child-sized tennis racket and sitting in mid air with no string attached.

Then we caught up with the rest of the CIEE team for a Duck Tour trip. The “ducks” are yellow, robust, heavy-duty buses which double as motorized boats while floating on the Thames. According to our Duck Tour guide, they used to load and deliver supplies for the military in the times of war and now provide curious tourists 90-minute guided tours around the city. Each vehicle is named after a female character from Shakespeare’s plays. Ours was Portia from Julius Caesar and the one that departed before ours was Cleopatra.

I love how London has such visible remnants of its past, both grim and glorious, in between modern glass-and-metal office buildings. I cannot wait to visit as many of the pop-culture landmarks, historic sites and museums as humanly possible this semester.

Pictures to follow soon (hopefully within this or next week, because I’m using a netbook and the way the screen works on mine isn’t best for uploading pictures).

Location: London, UK

O hai there London!

Hi folks! Welcome to my GeoBlog page 🙂 🙂

Quick facts about myself:
I’m Kasumi, a junior print journalism major/psych & int’l studies minor.
I was born in Japan to Chinese parents and grew up in both China and Japan.
I have been to 10 countries/regions: Japan, China, USA, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey and Egypt.
I speak Japanese, English, Mandarin Chinese and Shanghainese.
I’m a HUUGE fan of raqs sharqi (which is a fancy word for belly dancing) and bhangra music.
I love (window) shopping and museum hopping.

As you can see I’ve been quite a globe-trotting nomad myself so you shouldn’t expect cute-but-naive posts like “oohhhh my word! people in Country X serve and eat a fish WHOLE!!!!!!!!!”
Eating a fish whole (and sometimes live or raw) is a normal part of someone’s life, somewhere on this planet. You just don’t know. Normalcy is such an arbitrary thing once you open your eyes to new cultures.

I will be looking into stuff that’s buried deeper and more interesting, to me personally.
I’m particularly looking forward to discovering how the Londoners/Brits define gender equality, diversity/multiculturalism and globalization.
And also getting a taste of the belly dance/bhangra scene, of course!

I hope you all can join me in this journey! 😀

P.S. And I wish all of my fellow GeoBloggers, study abroad students and my offline friends & family a happy holiday season! 🙂

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Just checking in

+ Life is still grand here in Leeds. I haven’t done much recently that warrants blogging here. I keep my own blog daily, but it’s much more friends-only.

+ Classes are classes. Considering what little effort I’ve put into my modules this year, I’m happy to report that my lowest grade for last term will transfer as a B+ to Penn State. I also have confirmed that I only have to do the fall semester when I get back. That means I will have graduated with a Penn State degree with only spending 5 semester, or 2.5 years on campus. I am extremely grateful for that.

+ I do miss THON. It’s the only thing I thought I was going to miss this year and I do miss it. I hope it’s going awesome for everyone there!

+ I don’t understand immigration laws. I speak English, I will have a university degree and I will have lived in the UK for a full year, but do I qualify for a visa? No. Nope. Nada. Stupid EU agreements are making immigration laws in the UK even more strict. I may have to do a grad program after all just to come back and be able to live and work here for a few years.

+ I’m going to see Swan Lake at the ballet in London next month. Bertie’s mom is taking me. I’m quite excited because I’ve never been to a ballet even though I danced ballet for 8 years when I was growing up and after seeing “Black Swan” (and loving it) I’m really curious about the actual ballet.

+ Filmmaking is going well! I had an unpaid job last week as a runner for a casting session. The director ended up liking me so took my details to help out with the actual production. I’ve also helped with a new short that I co-wrote, produced and starred in for a competition. Bertie and I are in the writing stage for another short and (hopefully) a feature film for the distant future. I do love being able to do this sort of thing! I never would’ve done this back at PSU.

+ A year is a long time to be abroad without a job. Although I did a careful budget, I’ve managed to spend way more than I should’ve by this point. Am going to the part time job fair at the uni on Monday to see if I can get anything for a couple months. We shall see.

+ Been ill with a stomach bug all day and have had no sleep so I’m going to see if I can fix that.

Location: leeds, UK

I never want to leave!

I have never been so happy that I chose to study abroad for a whole year. A semester would just be devastatingly short. It’s going to be hard enough going home for a grand total of 6 days over Christmas. I don’t even want to think of how hard it’ll be to leave at the end of the summer. Yes, the end of the summer. I am currently fighting to find internships in London for 2 months so that I don’t have to leave in June.

Anyway, I am still enjoying life about 10x more than I did back at PSU. The people here are so wonderful. I have made better friends in the last month and a half than I have for 2 years at PSU.

I was supposed to go to London this weekend, but decided not to since I’m going to Dublin next weekend and London again on the 11th of November (which is my 20th birthday AND the premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1). Rather, I am having the most productive day of my life (not as much of an exaggeration as you may think). I woke up before noon (11:55am, but still!), went to the library for 3 hours, wrote an essay for Monday, checked out 5 books for one of my mid-term essays, tidied my room, vacuumed my room, made a wrap and 2 cups of tea, did my laundry, and am currently reading and taking notes on one of the books I checked out. Once my laundry is dry, I will be showering. Tonight I’ll be going out with my floormates, so I am having a well-rounded productive day. This is so exciting.

Speaking of tea, how much tea is too much tea? I put a lot of sugar in tea, so that’s not healthy. But oh well. I’m on my third cup in the last hour and a half. I am becoming too English with this habit. But it’s so yummy. And cheap. And cheap is key.

In more personal news, my brother graduated from boot camp yesterday! He leaves Parris Island in 3 hours to go home for 10 days before being stationed in California for a few months. He’s 18 and a marine. I’m proud of him for making it through. I was able to talk to him via email for the first time since July. He’s going to come over here and visit after he’s done in California, so I’m excited!

One thing I miss about home: Steak. Oh how I could go for a delicious steak. Yum. The English don’t do steak as well as we do, or at least not for the same price. And I am being cheap. Still surviving on bacon (and now chicken pattys!) for my meat source. I told my parents that when I come home for Christmas I demand to be taken to Outback for a steak and a bloomin’ onion. They think I’m joking. I’m not.

I am cooking a Thanksgiving dinner/feast for 12 people! Rather, I am organizing and directing the cooking and everyone is helping out. It should be epic.

Location: Leeds, UK

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