Sunflowers in Poland: On Top of the World

Today was absolutely spectacular.

I stood on top of the world.

Well, on top of Scotland at least.

My class is now in Edinburgh, Scotland. We are staying in a 17th century palace called Dalkeith House, and I feel like I'm going to discover Narnia at any minute now. We have been given free reign of the house and there are dozens of rooms, hidden doors, and winding staircases to explore. And yes, there are dozens of wardrobes. I'm still working my way through opening every one of them ;) There are also 800 acres of land, horses, woods, rivers and streams...can I just stay here forever?

The backyard of our palace!

The front yard of our palace!

OUR PALACE!

More of the backyard...

A view from the bridge :)

Today I, along with four of my fellow classmates, climbed to Arthur's Seat; a hill towering 822 feet over Scotland's capital city of Edinburgh.

Being the silly tourists that we are we thought it would just be an easy afternoon hike and set up the hill with bags of souvenirs, too many layers of jackets, and no water.

Little did we know we were going to be conquering a Scottish mountain!

It took us an hour and ten minutes to get to the very top, but of course we stopped to take a million pictures along the way. Jolene and Ellie practically sprinted to the top and probably waited at least 20 minutes for me, Cecily, and Morgan to huff and puff our way up to the top. We literally had to rock climb with our hands and feet up steep ledges to get to our final destination!

But we made it. And it was totally beyond worth it.

Although this covers about 2% of what I saw, I'll let pictures tell the rest of the story...