Greetings from Edinburgh

Hello all!

Well, we are now right in the midst of our holiday travels, with only one more day, one more night, and one more very early morning left in Edinburgh, Scotland. By mid-morning Wednesday we will be in Dublin, Ireland to tour around for a few days, assuming all goes to plan, which in our case is assuming too much given previous events. Before going any further allow me to recap the events of the past few days.

December 27, The Hague: A day spent looking at the city that boasts the Netherlands seat of Government and all that goes with it.

December 28, Amsterdam: Basically a day of walking...followed by more walking, but a fun day nonetheless, filled with interesting sites that included the Anne Frank House, among others.

December 29, Amsterdam to Manchester: The original plan -- get up early, breakfast at the hostel at 6:30, short walk to train station, catch the 7:22 trains to Schiphol Airport (get there by 8:00 am), have plenty of time to go through airport and catch our 10:00 flight to Manchester -- needless to say, things did not go accordingly.

What really happened? Well, we did wake up early -- packed and ready in record time -- however, upon reaching the lobby at a little after 6:15 am we were shocked to find out breakfast (unlike every other hostel and despite what was listed on the website) was not until 7:00. As I had the times and platforms written down for four following trains, we decided to wait for breakfast, since it was "free" (or rather included in the price of our stay). Fortunately, since we were not the only guests "mistaken" about what time breakfast was served, the hostel allowed for breakfast to be served at 6:50, so 10 mintues early. We ate a quick breakfast and hurried out the door and down the street in plenty of time to catch the 7:33 train. Of course, on the way we took one wrong turn and missed that train by a few minutes. But, the next train would be along at 7:45, only about 25 minutes later than we originally wanted, but still alloting us plenty of time since it is less than a twenty minute train ride to Schiphol. Unfortunately, skipping over the details of our dreadful realization, the train we were on was not stopping at Schiphol on this trip. Yes, it was the correct train and time, and every other day it does stop at Schiphol, except that one trip -- yet, the train station had not changed the sign; although, we were later informed that the train station had made an announcement, but we never heard any announcements (not that we would have understood an announcement in Dutch). To our misfortune, and that of a few other Schiphol travellers and even employees, we were on our way to Leiden. But, with a little luck and some help from a very kind lady, we made it onto a train back to Amsterdam Schiphol within minutes of getting off the first train. Then, arriving at Schiphol just after 9:00, we made it from the train station airport to the boarding line in 22 minutes flat -- even including my trouble with security. It was the fastest I had ever run. We made our plane. It took off a little after 10:00 and an hour or so later we were in Manchester, England, which we spent the day exploring and visitng museums.

December 30: On this day we took a train from Manchester to Edinburugh, perhaps, the most beautiful city I've seen.

December 31: We celebrated New Year's Eve by touring and participating in Hogmanay, Edinburgh's huge street party festival, along with 80,000 other people.

January 1: Touring in Edinburgh.

January 2: A train/bus ride to St. Andrews, which turns the Old Course into a public park on Sundays for the locals to walk on as they choose.

January 3: More of Edinburgh, specifically the Castles and a few museums.

As for Dublin, I'm just excited. Plus, even if things do not go as planned, I am willing to bet we will make our plane.

Until Next Time,
Jessica

Edit from Farrell:
I have been photo-documenting our travels even more rigorusly than normal, and will upload those photos as soon as I have enough bandwith to do so. Right now, we are on a slow 3G connection.

Univeristy Photo's Up

Jessica and I went on a walk, in between light rain showers, to explore some parts of Radboud's campus we had not yet visited properly. I had gotten a quick glimpse of a fragment of a massive concrete tower-like structure through a window in the Huygensgebouw (HG) building during a Prolog programing lab, and, thinking of the centrality of the bell tower on NCSU's campus, I thought it deserved looking in to. It turned out to be noteworthy and cool, but by a different metric. It was a physically prominent marker for a very cool area of campus, including the super-modern HG building, an underground very strong magnet lab, and some really cool green space designs. Here is an excerpt from a Radboud sub-domain webpage on the magnetic lab:

"The High Field Magnet Laboratory (HFML) is a European research facility used for research on materials in very high magnetic fields. This striking building is in fact a large factory that is needed to achieve a continuous field of 33 Tesla or a pulsed field of 60 Tesla in a small research cell. There are only two other comparable laboratories in the entire world.

The main users, research scientists of the Institute for Molecules and Materials, concentrate on the measurement of quantum effects, magnetic manipulation of molecules and on optical and far infra-red spectroscopy. The state of weightlessness that occurs in magnetic fields is comparable to those in space and provides excellent conditions for growing pure (protein) crystals." - Radboud

Anyway, check out the decent sized photo set of Radboud University, including beautiful green spaces and cool building designs among a spattering of other interesting things. Click here for a large image sideshow with descriptions visible, or here for the set main-page.

Farrell

Edit: You may have noticed that the blog currently has a poll question up. Voting in this poll is only open for 2 more days, so please, if you would like to share your input, which helps us improve the blog, do so while you have a chance!