Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
So we packed up our things and got the plane to Scotland. I have to say that I wasn't that excited about Edinburgh. However, I have now realized that I have grown up in the wrong place all my life. My home is in Scotland!! It is the most beautiful city and puts Dublin to shame. So for future record, if you have extra money and want to travel, forget Dublin... go to Edinburgh. I mean it. Again we hit the ground running, we got to our hostel and it was a really nice one. It had high ceilings and in a beautiful castle like building. The people were very friendly and it was just charming. We were hungry and we got a discount if we went next door to the café. Hope and Liz were very brave and decided to have a real Scottish breakfast with Haggis and beans... there was no way hell I was about to put that in my mouth. Do you have any idea what haggis is? Look it up. I won't spoil it for you. I did, however, take a bite and regretted it because it actually tasted pretty good. That was enough. Ick! Then we explored a little, the girls went up a monument that was called the Nelson monument. I was all for it until it said that claustrophobic people should not go up so I didn't. So while they huffed and puffed up over three hundred stairs to the top, I walked around and took some pictures and finally just sat down on a bench and had the first alone time in several days and frankly, it felt pretty good. I just people watched and it flashed in my mind that I was Scotland. How cool is that? The people were the friendliest that I ever come across and the weather was cold, but it was nice. Not so rainy as Ireland. While the girls were up on top of the monument, they saw a cluster of ruins in the distance and decided to try to find them, so went walking the general direction of them. I'm not going to lie, the walking wasn't so bad, but when we got there it was the steepest climb I have ever encountered. That is the thing about Edinburgh folks, everything is super steep, but when I finally got to the top and saw what those ruins were, it was awesome. There really is no other explanation or word for it. It was just plan awesome. Although, we did get caught in a pretty heavy rain with no umbrella on the way up, but it was totally worth it. After that we just pretty much walked around, Kristen is a Hard Rock Café fanatic, so we stopped there and she bought as t-shirt. She was super excited because that would be the last Hard Rock we would encounter in future travels. So we HAD to go but I love it here.
