day 359

“oh, my dear boy, we’re not going to punish you for a little thing like that. it was an accident. we don’t send people to azkaban just for blowing up their aunts.”

haha, don't you just love harry potter? i mean, really, those who knock it obviously haven't read the books. i know. i used to be one of them. i refused to read them cos they looked silly and childish. then, my sister left on a mission and made me promise i would read all the books while she was gone. best decision of my life. 

kind of like going to alnwick castle. what's so great about alnwick castle, you ask? oh, it's just where harry potter was filmed- the REAL LIFE hogwarts!!! man, if only i had a robe, a wand, and a broom- then you may as well refer to me as luna lovegood. 

after a scary drive to the castle, we stopped for lunch before heading inside. as we were walking up the hill towards the entrance, lora remembered that the spot where we parked had a time limit. she decided to head back down, move the car, and meet us at the entrance. so, the rest of us got to the top of the hill and waited for her at the entrance... 

15 minutes go by... 30 minutes go by... hey, look! there's hagrid! he's leading in a wedding party! 

45 minutes go by... here comes the bride and groom in arthur weasley's light blue ford anglia (identical)! so cool! 

an hour goes by... okay, something's gotta be wrong. the car was just down the street. lora should have been here forever ago. brooke decides to investigate (and check out some thrift stores while's playing detective). she comes back up the hill and tells us there is an ambulance at the bottom. maybe lora got in a car crash or had a heart attack (driving in the UK is pretty stressful)! we decide to go down and look around the city, see if we can find the car, get more info about the victim, and try calling her. well, the car is gone, the victim was from the city, and we realize we don't have lora's phone number. 

sigh. 

it has now been 2 hours. we've seen the same weird guy drive his car by the castle seven times. the security guard probably thinks we're homeless. my tongue is raw from all the sour patch kids i've eaten. we finally decide to walk back to the entrance. and guess who's there? daniel radcliffe!!! just kidding. it was lora. i totally had you though, for like half a second. 

it turns out, tricky alnwick castle has more than one entrance. lora moved the car, found a parking lot right next to an entrance to the castle and had been waiting there for 2 hours until she found us at the other entrance. 

the moral of the story is always bring your cell phones (jenene) and make sure they are turned on (lora). haha!! the tragic part of the story is that by this time, it was too late to go in the castle and see the different rooms, but we did get to walk all around the grounds, gardens, and anywhere outside the castle. even though we missed out on part of the harry potter adventure, it was totally worth it for the grounds. SO BEAUTIFUL!!! and enchanting!

later that night, when we got back to edinburgh, we decided to go on a ghost tour. our tour guide was great! i love dramatic theatre people. they are so entertaining. i probably laughed the most and loudest. he took us to these 18th century underground vaults and told different ghost stories, true stories, and told us all about the scary history of edinburgh. my favourite was probably the story of burke & hare, edinburgh's most famous serial killers. 

okay, i'm sleepy. more tomorrow.