Tomorrow I embark on another journey. This one is not a vacation, but a mission trip to Tamarindo, Costa Rica. Our team of seven will be serving alongside Calvary Chapel Villa Real. Our goal is to bless Pastor Phil McKay and his wife Rebecca, and to help serve their church in any way possible. Please keep our team in prayer as we seek to serve God and the people of Tamarindo in this way. Pray that the Lord will fill us with His Spirit. Pray that God will use us and work through us to bless the people of Costa Rica. Pray that hearts will be moved and lives will be transformed. We know God has called each of us to go on this trip and we trust that He is going to do incredible things! So pray and stay tuned!

Days 21 & 22

We spent some time shopping in Edinburgh, taking advantage of our last opportunity to visit some British stores. We ate lunch at a Scottish comfort food diner called Mums. We then drove to Glasgow where we caught our one-hour flight back to Dublin. By the time our flight got in it was almost 8:00pm. We ate dinner at a Thai restaurant in Malahide Village, an area on the shore with a ton of restaurants. By the time we finished dinner, it was pretty late and we were all tired from the trip, so we went to our B&B and went straight to bed.

In the morning, we ate breakfast at our B&B, then went straight to the airport. We stayed closed to the airport on purpose, so the drive was only five minutes. We flew from Dublin to Philly, where we had a two-hour layover. We said goodbye to Kevin, who flew in to LAX, and my parents and I took our flight home to San Diego. It was a gorgeous trip, but a long one and by day 22, I was sick, tired, and glad to be home.

Day 20

We spent this day in Edinburgh. It's a gorgeous city with beautiful old buildings everywhere you look. We started off at Edinburgh Castle, which was old and beautiful, just like the castle we visited the day before. The best part of this castle was a well curated exhibit about the crown jewels of Scotland, which had been lost for hundreds of years. It ended with our own glimpse of the jewels.

We then visited the camera obscura, which was the highlight of my day. It's located at the top of an 8-story building and was built in the 1800s. It uses a small mirror to reflect an image of the city through three lenses on to a table in the center of a dark room. The mirror can be turned, offering 360-degree views of the city below. It was amazing! The rest of the museum was filled with all sorts of weird things: holograms, optical illusions, zoetropes, a mirror maze, and much more. It was a lot of fun and made us all feel like kids again.

After getting lunch, we walked to a cozy used book store. We spent a little while browsing and I bought an old copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. My parents went off to do some touristy things, so Kevin and I went into a few little shops before making our way to Elephant House. It's the busy coffee shop where J. K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book. Kevin and I got coffee and a snack, then sat down to read our books. The shop was packed with Harry Potter fans and people were constantly taking pictures. My favorite part was the bathroom. Harry Potter lovers had scribbled comments all over the walls. One person wrote on the toilet seat, "JK's toilet! She once sat here!" and another fan wrote in response, "OMG!!!" Overall, I really enjoyed Edinburgh and would love the chance to spend some more time there!

Day 19

We ate breakfast at our castle-manor-house-hotel, then headed into town to an old used book shop we had seen the night before. The store was amazing! It had previously been a large church, but was now completely full of books. It had a large wood-burning fireplace in the middle and a spiral staircase leading upstairs to more books and a cafe. It also had a lot of vintage prints of various things including castles, fairies, story book illustrations, and botanical prints. We spent several hours there and could have browsed even longer.

We then headed toward Edinburgh with plans to stop by Stirling Castle on the way. We got a little bit lost, but finally made it. At the castle, we saw a woman re-creating one of the beautiful tapestries that would have hung in the castle. We saw the palace and the chapel and the great banqueting hall. Its amazing to imagine what life would have been like for the kings and queens living there thousands of years ago.

Day 18

We took our time in the morning with eating breakfast, packing up, and saying goodbye to Gilbert and George (the two donkeys). We then drove a few hours to Loch Ness, stopping again on the way to take some more photos of Eileen Donan Castle. When we got to Loch Ness, we went to the Loch Ness Monster Exhibition Centre. The museum gave a good history of the situation and really left it up to you to decide if you believe in Nessy or not. I was amazed to learn about the many efforts to patrol and monitor the loch in search of her. I was also interested to learn that Loch Ness holds enough water to cover all the people in the world three times over. No wonder its been so difficult to search the entire thing! We spent a little while gazing out in search of her, but to no avail. Maybe next time...

We got lunch in Inverness and then spent some time shopping. It seemed like a really awesome little city and I wish we would have been able to spend some more time there. We stayed at Bunchrew House, which my Mom described as a castle-manor-house-thing. And that's exactly what it was: a large castle-shaped pink house. We decided to have a leisurely evening playing board games in the lounge. Then I headed to bed early, as I was feeling pretty sick.