A weekend with the Scots

Wow - Edinburgh is incredible!

I'll start by describing the town.. when you exit the train station you can see the architecture everywhere. The buildings are all old, brownish in color and beautiful. The streets are lined with shops and pubs of course, and cafes. That part is similar to parts of London, except most of the roads in Edinburgh are bricks (like some streets in columbia) and on one side the sidewalk has steps down to the street. The streets are hills - you're either constantly walking uphill or down. Our legs got quite the workout this weekend.

Friday:

We got to Edinburgh around 6, a 4 and a half hour train ride with guys sitting by us playing drinking games - a good idea I will remember for next time. We passed through the original York - I'm assuming it's a bit better than the York in PA. We passed fields of sheep, flowers and farmland. Some of the scenery reminded me of PA, but a little prettier.

We dropped our stuff off at our hostel - Castle Rock Hostel - one of Scotland's top hostels, so not as scary as I expected. We met a girl from Harrisburg, PA. She went to school where Kaylin's dad went to school, his name is on the wall. haha. We were in the opposites room, my bed was named Ebony/Ivory. A creative way of assigning beds.

When you walk out of the hostel door you look right up to the castle - it's awesome. I have pictures to post eventually. We walked to nearby pubs - turns out they were Irish pubs, but oh well. Everywhere we went all weekend there were bachelor and bachelorette parties, but they call them Stags and Hens, so we were obviously in the fun part of town!

After 3 pubs we called it a night - Stew got turned down from one pub for "being too drunk" when really he wasn't that bad, I'm sure there were plenty of Scottish people much drunker than he was but oh well.

Saturday:

We ended up waking up early since girls in the room (there were 10 of us) woke up early. We started our day with a chocolate croissant and walked around the Royal Mile - the main road. I bought a pretty ring from a stand on the sidewalk, it's blue and according to Kaylin - "very me". We wandered up to the castle, hoping to walk around inside but it cost 9 pounds (18 dollars) thats a bit pricey so we took pictures outside and left. 

We went into a Whiskey tour place - We got a free glass and a free shot, learned how to taste it properly (it was gross) and then we learned lots of interesting facts about the making of whiskey and went on a ride - kind of like the ride at chocolate world. 

Then we walked downhill to the opposite end of the Royal Mile (connects the castle and the palace) and we saw the Palace where the Queen stays in Scotland in the summer. This was the palace where she spent two weeks after Princess Diana died and really pissed London off. After we had lunch (steak and ale pie which was pretty good) we walked back uphill and booked our excursion for Sunday. We walked past the Elephant House, where J.K. Rowling dreamt up Harry Potter. We also heard American music everywhere we went. Two guys were sitting on the street singing Rehab, by Amy Winehouse. I hate that song. 

Then we grabbed dinner, really good pizza - yes, Italian in Scotland, but we weren't very big fans of their authentic food, especially the Haggis. After dinner we went on a Ghost and Ghouls Tour. We stopped at various places on the Royal Mile and heard ghost stories that were pretty creepy, but then we went down to the vaults. They were rooms under a bridge that were meant for merchants' workshops, but got taken over by the poor and other strange people who mostly died down there. Their spirits stayed down there and we got to hear about a lot of friendly and not so friendly ghosts that are still there. One couple took a picture of a corner just to see if something would show up - a face showed up on the wall! Clear as day, a face --- totally creepy!!! 

Sunday:

We got on a bus at 8am and drove for hours to the Highlands. We drove through the Highlands for a while and it was absolutely beautiful. If anyone ever wants to take an outdoorsy vacation, go to the Scotland Highlands. There are allll kinds of rivers, lakes (or Lochs as they call them) and mountains, hills, grassy fields. It's so simple and relaxing and peaceful. There are fields of sheep - everywhere! Little ones with mom and dad, they were so cute! We saw Ben Nevis, Britain's largest mountain.

We stopped for lunch and I fed a Hamish - a weird looking cow with horns and really long hair. It was in it's own pasture but came right up to the gate when we bought lettuce and carrots inside to feed to it. It was nice! Then we got to Loch Ness where we took a cruise around the lake. It was very pretty. We went past a castle that was completely ruined but still kind of standing. (pictures to come) We unfortunately did not see Nessie - he/she wasn't feeling like coming out I guess. But the castle we saw is where most sightings have occurred. Some are skeptical, I can't figure out if I believe or not, but the lake is 23 miles long and 1000 feet deep, so a creature could definitely hide. We got home and went to a pub of course. We saw live music, the band was good even though we couldn't understand a word they were saying.

We came home today, caught an 11:30 train and listened to two incredibly obnoxious girls the whole way back - we wanted to tell them that American's have the stereotype of being loud for a reason, and to shut up but they eventually went to sleep after 3 hours of talking about boys and clubs - stuff no one wanted to hear. I started reading Kite Runner, it's good so far.

We had PERFECT weather all weekend. Barely any clouds in the sky and not freezing cold. 

I've spent the rest of my night writing another pointless paper for my pointless class and catching up with important people. 

That was my weekend! I reallllly enjoyed Scotland, didn't mind the hostel, loved the Highlands, and found a new drink - cider and black currant, delicious.

Back to class tomorrow, I'm overwhelmed with excitement .... yeah, that's a lie.

Cheers!