By Dani Lauren

In the past couple weeks I’ve done so many exciting things. I traveled to Scotland for a long weekend, saw three West End musicals, saw the Magna Carta and other treasures at the British Library, and finally got to enjoy Hyde Park in the springtime.

My trip to Scotland at the beginning of this month was unbelievable. Although we didn’t really luck out with the weather and we weren’t there for very long, we did get to see a lot of the country. The first day we took a twelve-hour bus tour through the Scottish Highlands all the way up to Loch Ness. I’ve never seen mountains and valleys so beautiful. Even though it was pretty cold, the mountains still had snow on them, we still got outside the tour bus to breathe in the fresh Scottish air and take in all of the scenery. We also took a boat ride along Loch Ness and tried to locate Nessie, but unfortunately we weren’t very successful.

The second day was our day out in Edinburgh. Unfortunately the winds were insane and it started pouring ice-cold rain early on in the day, so it was pretty miserable to be outside. We still got to walk most of the Royal Mile and go up to Edinburgh Castle, but we tried to take shelter in local pubs and cafes for the majority of the day. One of the cafes we went to happened to be the famous Elephant House, where J.K. Rowling sat and wrote Harry Potter in the back room. It was a quirky and colorful little place with elephants decorating the room. It wasn’t what I expected from the supposed birthplace of Harry Potter, but I could see what J.K. Rowling saw in it.

Back in London the next day I had the Monday off from work so I decided to finally go see the British library. I’m so glad I did because I got to see the Magna Carta, which was definitely an experience. Even better than that was their “Treasure Room,” filled with old manuscripts and sheet music dating back centuries. I got to see some original documents from Mozart to Debussy to the Beatles. It was such an inspiring feeling to me as a songwriter to see random pieces of paper that Paul McCartney and John Lennon had scribbled the beginnings of songs like “Yesterday” and “Help” on in a museum.

I can’t believe I only have two months left in this beautiful city, and just as its starting to warm up too! I feel like I still have so much I want to do that I won’t be able to see it all, but hopefully it won’t be too long before I get to come back here.