Brussels, London, Edinburgh

This vacation has been very busy and non stop.  I have enjoyed every minute thus far...even the not so good moments. Last time I wrote, I was on my way to Brussels. Well now I'm on a train to Normandy to see the beaches of D-Day. I am beyond excited about that but ill post about that later. When we arrived in Brussels, we hopped on a train for a short ride to Gent. It is a small town outside of Brussels. It is absolutely gorgeous and less touristy. We went in a beautiful cathedral and a castle. We climbed several sets of stairs. I think one set had close to 300 in it. This was just preparing us for the stairs we were going to climb in London. We went on a canal tour in Gent. We met this couple from Denmark. They were very nice and our tour guide was hilarious. 

We went under this tree during our ride. I felt like I was in The Little Mermaid during the "Kiss the Girl" scene.  At night the city of Gent lights up. Unbelievably gorgeous. We spent the night in Gent. The next morning we at a real Belgium waffle. I mean you're in Belgium so why not??  After breakfast we hopped a train back to Brussels to tour that city. Brussels was very touristy and loud. I wasn't a huge fan of Brussels. Around 5pm we got on a train and road about 2 hours to London. As soon as we arrived, we got in a cute taxi and rode to our hotel. London is pretty overwhelming when you first arrive. There is a lot to take in. Kaitlin and I are GINORMOUS fans of the royal family!!! We woke up early the morning of the Royal Wedding to watch it. We have been following Kate throughout her pregnancy. We were hoping she would have the baby while we were there so we could see the announcement on the easel but sadly that didn't happen. We walked around London for a little bit the night we arrived but decided to head to bed early since we had a busy day ahead of us. We pretty much covered all of London in about 20 hours. We walked all over the place, climbed 526 stairs in St. Paul's Cathedral, rode the metro around, walked through Westminster Abbey, and then walked around some more. That night we were soaked in sweat and our feet were throbbing. Apparently London was under a heat wave while we were there. It was only 85 degrees there but still hot. When we would tell people it would sometimes get up to 100 degrees back home they looked shocked. I liked London but I do not know if I could live in a busy city like that. 

Big Ben

Westminster Abbey

We left London Saturday afternoon and rode a 4-hour train to Edinburgh, Scotland. This by far was my favorite city. It was touristy but very welcoming and calm. The weather was in the upper 60s and felt amazing. We bought a ticket that allowed us to ride the different tour buses around town. Although most of the tour guides on the bus said the same stuff, it was still fun to hear the different guides talk. All of the buses were hop on, hop off buses. We could get off at any of the various stops to tour the city and then get back on at another stop. I think Scotland was my favorite place because my family comes from a Scottish background. One of my ancestors made one of the stain glass windows in the St.Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh. I tried to see which one it was but it was hard to read the writing on them. So I just took a picture of all of them...I'm bound to find it. :) Monday morning Kaitlin and I decided to go hike the Pentland Hills. It was very foggy and muggy that day but the 2 1/2 mile hike was awesome. The view at the top of our trail was breathtaking. 

The view from our hike. 

On our final day in Edinburgh, it poured down rain. Luckily we only had a couple of hours that morning before we had to leave for the airport. We decided to kill time in this department store. We found this section that had fascinators in it. Of course we had to try on several. 

A small collage of some of our hats!! After our fun in the store we headed to the airport. We had to catch a plane to Paris for the final stretch of our trip. As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, we are on a train to see the beaches of D-Day at Normandy. I will most likely post when I get home about our Paris adventures. 

Amsterdam

At this moment I am on a train to Brussels so I figured it would be the perfect time to write about the past few days. We left Monday at 11:15am from Charlotte to begin our journey. This meant that we left my parents house around 6am so we would miss most of the Charlotte 8am traffic. We were only stopped in traffic for about 5 minutes. When we got to the airport, the people couldn't print off my boarding pass for some unknown reason. Of course I naturally started to stress thus causing me to sweat. TMI I know but oh well ha. After talking to the special services, they were able to print the boarding pass. Airport security took 2.5 seconds. Normally I am the one they pull off to the side to do a detailed searched, never fails. However this time it happened to Kaitlin. The flight from Charlotte to Atlanta was very short. We sat in Atlanta for a couple hours before boarding our 8 1/2 hour flight to Amsterdam. This flight included 2 screaming babies that sat within a 10 foot radius of us. I get the babies do not understand what is going on with the pressure changes and stuff but still. One baby fell asleep for the duration of the trip the other baby on the other hand did not. The flight wasn't full so Kaitlin and I were able to have our own row granted it consisted of 2 seats but I'm not complaining. Day 1 in Amsterdam was nice. The weather was mid 70s and sunshine. We walked almost everywhere. We did take the metro to some places. The Anne Frank house was probably my favorite thing we saw. We couldn't take pictures while we were in the house. The people here are really friendly and very helpful. 

Us before going through airport security. 

Bored in the airport

The train station in Amsterdam. 

My gigantic pancake that was oh so delicious!! 

Side note: when I get home I will go into a little more detail. I am writing this post from my phone so my thumbs get a little tired of typing after awhile. 

Next stop Brussels!!! 

Adventure Time

Today is officially here!! Kaitlin and I are in the car headed to the Charlotte airport. My parents were kind enough to drive us up here. We left Columbia at 6am. Out flight doesn't leave until 11:15 but I wanted to avoid 8am Charlotte traffic as much as possible. It hasn't really sunk in yet that we are going to Europe for two weeks but I'm sure it will hit soon enough. Well it is 7:30am and we have hit our first patch of standstill traffic. I will try and update throughout my trip but I can't make promises. I saw this picture on Pinterest and it completely describes how I feel right now. 

Life update

I really am terrible at updating my blog. I cannot think of all the times I thought about updating but was just too tired. I decided it was probably best to do an update on my life in this post. Hopefully, I will get better at this...we shall see. 1. In my last post, I announced that I was going to South Africa this summer. Well withing the last couple of weeks, Kaitlin and I did more research to scope out our trip. We discovered that it was becoming more and more unsafe for 2 single females to go to South Africa alone instead of with a larger group. Too many mishaps were happening during the day time and quite frankly it wasn't worth the risk just to go to South Africa. We decided to change our destination to Europe. Our original trip had us stopping in Amsterdam for a 25 hour layover. We kept that part of our trip since it was already booked. We will go to Amsterdam, Brussels, London, Scotland, and end in Paris. We both feel much more at ease about this trip but both promised that we would go to South Africa one day! Prince Harry here I come! :) 2. Back in January, I resigned from my cheer coaching position at Irmo and accepted a cheer coaching position at Chapin High School. I coached for three years at Irmo and enjoyed my time there. It was a great start to my coaching career. I ended up transferring to Chapin for many reasons. One was that it was only a five minute commute from work since I taught at the middle school. For me this move was a GIANT leap out of my comfort zone. I went to Irmo Middle and Irmo High School where I cheered for five years in the program. I knew Irmo like the back of my hand. I was comfortable there, I knew a lot of the coaches and the area. When I decided to transfer, I was very nervous. I had talked to my parents about the decision. They helped me weigh the pros and cons. I have to say that so far everything is going well. I still have my moments where I am uncomfortable, mainly because I am still getting used to my surroundings and meeting other coaches. But I must say this was the best move for me. 3. I recently turned 25. Building up to turning 25, I did not want to do it. I was having a quarter-life crisis. I felt like there was so much I had yet to complete before I turned the big 2-5. I felt like every time I turned around, people I knew were getting married and/or having kids. Not that I am necessarily ready to get married or have children at this moment but I don't know I just had this feeling like something was missing. So I turned my frustration to God. I feel like recently my relationship with him has grown so much more. He is teaching me to have more patience and to enjoy life. I am learning more and more that if it is meant to be, it will happen. HE does not need my help in making things happen, HE has it ALL under control! :) Since I turned 25 at the end of March, I will say that so far things are going good. Nothing is perfect, I still have my moments but overall life is great! 4. I finished my third year of teaching. Some days I feel like I have been teaching all my life while other I feel like I just started. This past year I had amazing students. They made me cry from laughing so hard, smile, and feel loved. This year reminded me of my first year of teaching. That year is still my favorite year! I am reminded daily that teaching is my calling. I am meant to be in the classroom. 5. I am moving back to math!! I taught math my first year but when we went off block scheduling, we needed more science and social studies teachers. Being elementary certified, I can teach anything 2nd-6th. They were able to keep me at CMS but I just had to move content areas. Being a first year teacher at the time, I was happy to move content instead of not being able to come back. Just recently a 6th math position came available at my school and I was able to switch to it for the following school year. I am so excited. Math is hands down my favorite! I could do math all day long. Well maybe not but I do love it a lot! :) That is my life recently in a nutshell...I think ha ha