Jett's Study Abroad Experience
Spring 2023
Spring 2023
I have known for a long time that one of my ambitions in life is to travel as much as possible and see the world, and until this last weekend, I had never really had any experience of what traveling really is... But boy did I learn pretty quick this weekend on my trip to Scotland. It all started a week and a half ago when I initially started to plan my trip to Scotland, as my friend and I really only had one goal of going north to see the Northern lights. We had booked our tickets to a town called Inverness which is on the upper northern region of Scotland, with a plan to then take a train to a much more remote town on the Isle of Skye called Uig. Long story short, this did not happen at all. I am going to break down this trip day by day to help explain the full extent of the chaos that was this trip. But keep in mind as you read this, that despite being someone who has a grand goal of traveling all over the world, I have very little experience to my name. Day 1: On this day, there was really very little that actually went wrong if I'm being honest. In the morning I quickly finished packing my backpack so that I could quickly go catch the train since the budget airline we were using to fly out only flies out of some of the airports that are farther away. The crazy part about this flight from London to Inverness, was that to fly across the country, the flight was only about an hour and a half, and the airport that we flew into is one of the smallest I have ever seen. This airport only had 8 flights that flew in and left each day, and the one concourse only had 3 gates. So, our initial reaction was already that we had flown out to a very cold and very small town, which in and of itself is a very daunting idea. This first night also happened to be the first time either of us had stayed in a hostel, which for those who don't know is like a hotel, but instead of having your own room, you are sharing a room that has 4 to 6 bunk beds and there are other travelers staying with you. Personally, I actually really liked meeting the other travelers since a couple were our age, but I was also really glad I had a friend with me because the next morning things were going to get crazy. Day 2: We woke up quite early so that we could quickly go grab some food at the store and then rush to take our train out to the much more remote town. When we got to the train station though, we started seeing train after train get cancelled due to 60 mph winds and very heavy rain that was happening throughout the country. This continued until finally, and inevitably, we watched our train flash red and blink to say cancelled for the next couple days. This quickly presented a problem because all of a sudden, we had no idea what we were going to do since we had no idea what to do in Inverness and we had no place to stay for the whole weekend. Following our train getting cancelled, we ran back to the grocery store so that we could call all of our reservations and let them know we were not coming and that we need a refund (most were accommodating, but not all gave us money back). After that we decided that it would be best not to stay in Inverness so we walked over to the bus station to see where we could buy tickets to. It didn't matter too much where we went since we didn't have anywhere to stay anyways, but luckily there was cheap tickets for a roundtrip to Edinburgh which is a much bigger city and is much closer to the rest of the UK. So, we hopped on the bus and started looking around for where we would stay that night and found a pretty cheap hostel that we could stay at for 2 nights. By the time we ended up arriving in Edinburgh was getting close to being dark, so we quickly checked into our hostel (which we were lucky enough to have our own room at) and then went and found dinner at a local pub. After we ate, we decided to look around the area and ended up seeing my favorite abbey since arriving in the UK, and the best dressed looking street performers I have ever seen who was playing the bagpipes and wearing a full traditional Scottish uniform. Needless to say, the moment we arrive in Edinburgh I already knew that we had found success even in the shadow of everything falling apart. What I learned was that you have to be willing to be a good sport even when things don't go right, because we could have been in a much worse situation if we got frustrated or upset. Day 3: This was actually the only full day that we had in Edinburgh, which in complete honestly was perfectly okay with me. We did so many cool things on this day, but I'm only going to list them because if I were to talk about every single one this blog would be longer than it already is going to be. 1- We went and saw the Holyroodhouse Palace which is still a functioning palace that was used by Queen Elizabeth and is going to be continued to be used by the royal family going forward. During this tour we saw the whole royal procession, and the ruins of the abbey that was destroyed over the years. 2- We walked to Greyfriars Kirkyard which is where Thomas Riddell is buried, and yes that is the person who is the inspiration for he who must not be named in Harry Potter. 3- We saw the National Gallery of Scotland and the National Museum of Scotland 4- We went and toured a scotch whiskey distillery where we tried gin and scotch whiskey 5- We had some of the best fish n chips that I have ever had 6- Scotts Monument 7- We saw Edinburgh castle which is a UNESCO world heritage site. I will make a slideshow of all of these as well, but this was one of the best days I had had since moving out here to the UK. Day 4 & 5:
Day 4 was really the least exciting of the days as it was pretty much fully devoted to just taking the bus back to Inverness and finding a place to stay when we got there since our flight home was flying out of Inverness. On the bright side of the bus right back, we got a full scenic ride through the Scottish countryside, and we got a great view of Loch Ness which was very beautiful. Note: we did not see the real Nessie :( The hostel we stayed at was one of my favorites yet though, as it was up high on a hill side next to Inverness castle and it overlooked the whole town with a great view of the Inverness Cathedral. On day 5 we did not have a ton of time to walk around unfortunately since we did have to catch our flight, but we still tried to make the most of the day. The initial plan had been to go visit Loch Ness, but the wind was still blowing at about 30 mph and it was very cold and rainy, so we ultimately decided against risking getting stranded at Lochness and missing our flight. While we may have had a chance to see Nessie by getting stranded, we decided to walk along the river Ness and visit the cathedral. Along the way we did find a big wooden Nessie that I took a wonderful picture on. This picture is the one I am adding at the end. Unfortunately, as our time walking along the river Ness came to an end, so too did our time in Scotland. While it was frustrating that our whole trip was derailed, it also helped us to go with the flow and create a trip that took us so much further than we could have ever expected. While I hope that the rest of our trips go more smoothly, I do know that it will be okay even when plans fall through. This blog doesn't even cover half the things I could have expressed about this trip, but every part of our time out there was memorable, and this is a trip that I have learned way more than I would have ever expected from.
2 Comments
kitsmom
2/23/2023 04:29:57 pm
Your adventure makes me think of the poem by Robert Frost:
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JETT ZENTHOEFER
2/26/2023 10:29:19 am
I really like that poem! I definitely took the path less traveled, and it ended up being an incredibly positive experience.
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July 2023
While I attend the University of Hawaii at Manoa, I was born in Littleton Colorado and grew up in a rural area. When I moved out to Hawaii for school, I quickly found my groove in Shidler College of Business as a triple major studying Marketing, International Business, and Quantitative Economics, and I was later chosen to be one of the Shidler Global Leaders. This and several other scholarships, including the Johnson Scholarship, gave me the amazing opportunity to go spend a semester abroad in the United Kingdom.
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