Scubophilus Thistler

After a solid two weeks of exams they are finally over. It was very different to back home, with twice as many in the same space in time but I think they went alright anyway. In the last post we were about to leave for Paris, so I’ll continue from there. After a seven hour bus ride from Düsseldorf to Paris, we arrived and made our way to our hostel. After unpacking, we headed straight to the Eiffel Tower and after many photos there continued to explore the city. We took a free guided walking tour the next day, which covered a huge amount of the Parisian sites.

On Christmas day we headed up the Eiffel Tower for some stunning views of the city, and had a nice Christmas park in the Luxemburg Gardens. In the afternoon we went to the amazing Notre Dame Cathedral, where an organ service was taking place. We met people from the walking tour for drinks that evening, the Australian tour guide was quite a laugh. Quite a unique Christmas for Ash and I, but a very fun one.

On Boxing Day we headed to the Louvre for a few hours. It was enough to catch a glimpse of the Mona Lisa, surrounded by security guards, and explore a tiny portion of the museum. Definitely plenty more to see next time we’re in Paris. We headed out of town to see the catacombs that afternoon, but they were closed to renovations. That night we took an interesting tour of Montmartre, a district of Paris that remains very similar to how the entire city was hundreds of years ago. We started at Moulin Rouge, and made our way up the hill to the stunning Basilica of the Sacré Cœur. The next day we visited the Arc de Triomphe before our flight out to Scotland.

Glasgow seemed very similar to Leeds, just a fair bit more industrial. It was good to get out of the city (for the first time of the trip) into the Scottish Highlands as we did on the next day. The night before had seen the first snow of the season, so the mountains were snowcapped and picturesque. We got up close with a Red Dear, and stopped for a while at the Three Sister Mountain range. We made it as far as Glencoe, where we followed a trail around the beautiful lake named Glencoe Lochan. On our way back to Glasgow, we made a detour to Glen Etive, where we were surrounded by looming mountains and had a couple of waterfalls flowing through it.

After Glasgow we headed across to Edinburgh for their New Years celebrations, called Hogmanay. Despite being a wet night, we still had a brilliant time. You can’t say very often that you spent New Years watching fireworks launch in front of a castle, surrounded by a hundred thousand people. Overall, we had a fantastic trip – much better then staying back at uni studying. Tomorrow is the start of the new semester, so it’ll be interesting to see how the new subjects are.