The Escapades of Sir Calvino in England and Scotland

The first 2 days of the trip to England and Scotland

We are so back! After over a year hiatus, I have decided to renew my website subscription and start posting on my site again. Part of the reason why I decided to end my subscription was that my life up until recently was incredibly dull and boring. But to be honest with you, I enjoy being dull and boring sometimes. My life mostly consisted of work, going to the gym and gaming. Quite a bit has happened since I ended supporting my site the big one being that my grandmother passed away in late summer of last year. It was a hard time for my family and obviously for me as well. My grandparents played a pivotable role in shaping who I am today. I may dedicate a blog post later about this. The biggest event that happened was taking a trip with my parents and my brother Brady to two of the many lands of our European ancestors: England and Scotland.

Shortly following the passing of my grandma (my mom’s mom) we decided that instead of staying home for Christmas, we wanted to go on a trip somewhere. So my parents took the only single kids in the family (my brother Brady and yours truly), on a trip to London, England and Edinburgh, Scotland. Needless to say the trip was absolutely epic. Our trip was on December 23rd to January 1st. It will be a trip for the ages that I will cherish for the rest of my life unless I get dementia or Alzheimers lol.

I would be lying to you that the flight was not chill. Me being the girth-guy that I am, I was on a row on our plane between my brother and a lowkey black baddie. The baddie part was chill, but being stuck in the middle of her and my brother with no leg room for 11 hours wasn’t. I hate being on planes and I feel like time slows to a screeching halt every time I’m on one. I couldn’t sleep at all so I resorted to watching the first 2 John Wick movies, a random United Arab Emirates military movie I forgot the name of  and Godzilla: Minus One. It was a great time watching these movies aside from getting scrunched in every direction.

And so, we arrived at the London airport around 3 pm on Christmas Eve. For the first few hours arriving in England, I was pretty anxious. It was my first time out of the country outside of traveling to Mexico a few times. But that dissipated shortly once we got our uber from the airport to our hotel in London which was about an hour to an hour and a half drive. Once we arrived at our Marriott Hotel, we were warmly welcomed by the staff. We met some local Londoners and some other Europeans which was really cool. This young lad named Freddie who was an employee of the Marriot we stayed at was an absolute legend. He was stoked that we were from California and he wrote a note to Brady and I telling us all of the local spots to hit up while we were in London. I also met a dude around my name from Romania who was also a gamer so we chatted for a little while and he told me I should find a Romanian girl. Who knows? Now that I finally have a passport, I will become a “Passport Bro” and maybe bag a foreign baddie. An old man can dream haha. Shortly after we got settled into our hotel, we went to walk around and check the area out. We went to grab some dinner at a local “American BBQ” restaurant that was actually pretty good. The one thing that was wack was that the restaurant used mayonnaise instead of BBQ sauce for the steaks. I guess that's what they do in London. To each their own I guess. After dinner, we walked around and then went back to our hotel to sleep. 

That night was rough. My brother, Brady and I slept for a couple of hours and then were wide awake. We thought it was 6 or 7 in the morning and found out it was a little after midnight. We were like, “Bruh, this freaking blows!” So after trying and failing to sleep, we went to do a little girth session at the hotel’s gym. After our workout, we slept for a few more hours, or so we thought. We slept and didn’t wake up until nearly 2 pm! We were kinda pissed because the sun was starting to set by the time we rushed out of the hotel. With the little amount of sunlight left, we took an uber to check out the St. Peter’s Cathedral. Unfortunately it was closed due to the service being full. It made sense because this was Europe’s Christmas Eve and the streets were packed with tourists. I was blown away with the detail and architecture of the cathedral and neighboring buildings. It was a literal dream come true for my mom to visit this cathedral because one of her favorite movies is Mary Poppins and there is a scene where Mary feeds the pigeons and sings the song “Feed the Birds (Tuppence a Bag.) St Peters, like pretty much every building we saw, was just breathtaking. I was relishing every moment marveling at the beauty and detail of every statue carved by hand on the building. It was absolutely majestic. 

After admiring the cathedral and other buildings next to it for a time, we ventured forth to check out more sights. There were so many gorgeous buildings with some of the most epic statues that you’d ever see on a building. Literally every statue we saw had straight aura. While roaming around, we stumbled across a building that had a sign which said, “To the Friendship of English Speaking Peoples.” We all got a kick out of that. At the time the building was constructed, it was the most expensive building made in London’s history. We were amused at the sign because ironically, we were some of the only people walking around who were speaking English lol. Nearly every person we met was either Arab, Indian or some other European on holiday but hardly any actual Englishman/woman. For Christmas Eve dinner, we went to a local pub and had some great English food which consisted of meat pies, sausage and mash (mashed potatoes) and turkey. It was delicious! We all loved the ambiance of this restaurant. It was very relaxing and it had epic photos and paintings all over which really made the experience truly engaging. 

After dinner, we walked around and there were countless Christmas lights on nearly every street we visited. On one of those streets, there was a young woman singing popular Christmas songs who was drawing quite a crowd. We eventually made it to Big Ben. Upon arriving in London, I didn’t realize that Big Ben, England’s House of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey were all on the same lot. The buildings were out of this world and it was surreal to step foot in this iconic part of the city, let alone country. 

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So thus concludes the escapades of the first 2 days in London. My next blog post wil be of the second half of the trip in London. It will be of Christmas Day visiting the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey. This overall experience I will cherish for the rest of my life and I hope that I will continue to to amazing out of the country experiences in the near future. It is so good to be back and I hope you enjoyed reading about my trip.