Edinburgh, Scotland: Days 1&2

I spent this past weekend in Edinburgh, Scotland with Christine, Alex, Ramon, Dave L, and his roommate Jake. We had an absolutely fantastic time, and it was great to get out of London for a few days. Here is a run-down of our adventures:

Thursday, 18 February 2010
Departed at 11:15 pm for Edinburgh on a bus. Probably some of the worst nine hours of my life. We started out the night running late because the boys had forgotten to grab snacks for the ride, so we had to wait for them to go to the grocery store. When we finally arrived at the station, it was time to load the bus, and by the time we got on, there weren't any seats left together, so we had to separate. Christine ended up at the front of the bus, while the rest of us ended up at the back of the bus. I lucked out because the man sitting next to me realized I was friends with Jake, who was sitting in front of me, and he offered to switch with Jake, which worked out really well.

Now, I'm going to need to take a minute to share Christine's experiences on the bus ride, because they are so ridiculous that they would only happen to her. Basically, she was sitting across the aisle from a drunken, smelly, homeless man. He began the trip by unzipping his pants, putting both hands down them, and "fondling" himself. Christine, thinking this was really quite lovely, decided to put in her iPod and go to sleep. Unfortunately, she was awoken a little while later to someone groping her face. This "someone" turned out to be the homeless man, and he didn't stop until the guy in front of him turned around and said "Dude, seriously stop it." So Christine is sufficiently freaked out, and the homeless man just can't keep his hands to himself, and finally a nice man decides that he will switch seats with Christine so that she doesn't have to be groped any more. Oh, discount bus companies.

So anyways, we arrive in Newcastle for a scheduled stop around 4 am, when our bus driver decides it will be a cool idea to run into the bus shelter, literally. He cracks the windshield, and makes us all get off of the bus and get on another bus. However, he made us hurry off of the bus just to stand in the cold for half an hour. Super. We finally arrived in Edinburgh at the early hour of 8:25 am, and headed to our hostel.

Friday, 19 February 2010
We got to our hostel a few hours before check-in, so they let us drop our bags in the "wee room off of the kitchen" until we could get into our room. We grabbed some stuff to get us through the day, brushed our teeth and changed, and headed down the street to grab breakfast. We ate at the same place every day, The Royal Mile Pub. They had a create-your-own breakfast for £2.95 every day with a lot of options, and the food was really good and filling.

After we ate breakfast, we headed down the street to where they were giving out free tours. There is a company in Europe called NewEurope that gives free tours in most of the major cities around Europe. The guides work on a tips-only basis, and they ask that you give them as much as you have or as much as you think they deserve, but you are in no way obligated to pay them. This gave us a pretty extensive three-hour tour of the city, which was helpful in the coming days. Some sites we saw included a bunch of random historic landmarks that I can't remember (haha). We also got to see a bunch of landmarks relating to Harry Potter (hooray!). J.K. Rowling wrote the first two Harry Potter books in the Elephant Cafe in Edinburgh when she lived there. She couldn't afford heat for her home, so she would buy a cup of tea and sit in the cafe overlooking the city of Edinburgh all day while she wrote. Some things that are in Edinburgh include a graveyard where she got a bunch of names to use in the books (Tom Riddle and McGonagall were two of them), and the building that was her inspiration for Hogwarts (which is actually a school that her children attended!). There was also an extensive part of the tour based around Greyfriar's Bobby, a dog that used to follow his owner around the graveyard until his owner passed away, and then he sat on his grave for 7 years until he himself passed away. Bittersweet. People loved Bobby so much, however, that they continue to leave presents on his monument in the graveyard (he wasn't allowed to actually be buried there because apparently you have to be baptized to be buried in a graveyard, and he couldn't be baptized because he was a dog. Hm.)

After the tour, we found a really cute thing. On a bench in the park, there was a sign that read "Hi! Please use me to take 1 picture of anything that catches your eye. My owner will be back to collect me later. Thanks. XXX" with a camera attached. We took a few pictures (but not more than one each) and headed away. Hopefully the pictures will be posted soon: www.astrangerview.com

We headed back to the hostel after lunch, and we took a nap since we were all exhausted from not sleeping very well on the bus. We grabbed dinner at the Thai restaurant that was connected to our hostel, and then went out to a pub for a few drinks. We didn't last too late though, since we were still pretty tired. Side note: The Guinness in Scotland tasted like the Guinness in Ireland, which was a pleasant surprise (spoiler alert: Guinness in Ireland is pretty much the most delicious thing ever. Everywhere else in the world [except apparently Scotland] it tastes burnt.)

Edinburgh Days 3&4: Coming Soon!