Travel Tuesday, Tantallon Castle!

Tantallon Castle: It's about a 2 mile walk from the bus/train station in North Berwick, Scotland.

You walk down a road, past a few shops until you find the information center.

There you will find a sweet little old lady with a big smile on her face and maps to hand out,

she will tell you to take a right [à droite] once you get to the edge of the road,

then you'll walk past a grocery store and down a long winding road...

until you end up here...Tantallon Castle...or at least the ruins of Tantallon Castle!

A place full of magical history that dates back to the 14th century.

Let me, first of all, introduce you to this part of our story.

We are free traveling...and to those of you not familiar with study abroad terms,

"free traveling'' means, leaving the group,

breaking into smaller groups and going out and exploring the world on your own.

This means booking your own train tickets, plane tickets,

getting your own hostels, deciding where to go,

what to see, when to see it, what to eat, and how much money do you still have left to do all of this.

Or the whole do i need to call my dad and have him wire me more money!

Spoiled...I know!

Our small group consisted of Jess, Sam, Clay (the boy) and myself!

We left Paris and flew to London, dropped off the bags at a "left luggage" station and hopped on a train headed to Edinburgh, Scotland!

We got in pretty late, found our hostel and started researching things to see.

[we used public hostel computers, because Emily (me) forgot her computer charger at the airport in her luggage, along with her phone charger...facepalm]

Anyways...we search for places to visit close to Edinburgh...

More importantly places with CASTLES! Because who doesn't like a good castle?

The answer:

Everyone likes castles....it's in your blood.

Your great great great great great greeeaaaaattttt grandpappy probably lived in one!

Point proven.

The google machine is how we found North Berwick and more importantly Tantallon!

So we took a train from Edinburgh to North Berwick the next morning.

None of this would have been possible if it weren't for our little friend BritRail pass.

Let me just say this before i keep going...I LOVE ACCENTS

and the Scottish people are oh so adorable! 

Love them and their cute voices!

Is my "I'm American" showing?

Also North Berwick...can you say gorgeous?

This is a seaside town and it literally took our breath away, such a fun place to visit.

We did some walking and finally decided to hunt down the information lady 

so she could lead us toward the Castle!

Just take a look at this beautiful town!!!

The nice information lady told us exactly how to get to Tantallon, gave us a map and told us that we should stop by the store on the way and pack a picnic for when we get there.

So that's what we did, we all grabbed a few goodies from the store and started walking!

As you can see we didn't hate the walk, because it was a gorgeous sunny day, and we were walking down the road in Scotland, things you normally only see in cheesy romantic movies

like P.S. I Love You....well that was in Ireland but you get my point!

  After the long walk we finally came upon this beauty, Tantallon Castle!

It was literally one of the neatest things I have ever seen, and what was so great about it was it had story boards placed all around the grounds, telling you all about Tantallon.

Just take a gander through these pictures

Entrance to the grounds

Castle on the cliff

 

Here's our friend Clayton....Clayclay....leppy...doing what he does best, the titanic pose....

Bless him, he was the only boy in our group of 4. He did so good!!! :)

Is this not the most beautiful place you've ever seen??? ah i love it!

For those interested, you can watch the video i made of our journey through the UK, which includes Scotland, Ireland and some of England if i remember correctly.

Also Hugh Hefner is in there somewhere, so keep your eyes peeled!

Looking back at our entire trip, this day, these moments, were some of my absolute favorite.

Scotland is in my top 3 places to go back to!
So what do you think of our Castle? Have you been to any Castles?
Let us know, so we can have more reasons to pack our bags and head back to this magical land!

-Emily