Okay, here's the rest of my Scotland trip and I am working on getting the Germany stuff up so look for that in the next couple days too!
I guess I’ll just pick up where I left off…
12 Saturday
We woke up pretty early and I showered in a wonderfully hot shower. Then we went for out “typical” hostel breakfast of toast, cereal, and tea. While we were there we saw the creepy men from the night before but we basically just avoided their table and they left us alone. Jamye, Annie and I then went into town on the shuttle (boy was it freezing we got in the van and all the windows totally frosted over so we couldn’t really see the sights as we were driving by, bummer). We decided to go to the “most photographed spot” in Edinburgh according to my tour book so we started hiking in that direction. Before we arrived in Edinburgh we knew that it was going to be cold, rainy and very very windy… thank goodness it was only cold and breezy, but even that was pretty unbearable. After a ½ hour hike around we finally came around to the street that we wanted to be at and much to my dismay it actually wasn’t anything very special at all. But, we decided that it still was pretty and just moved on from there. Along the way we came across a cemetery, I really like cemeteries, Sarah Hunter, that’s all your fault once again! Anyways, we went in it and it was huge it went on for days and days but I only allowed myself to stay for a little while, one of the biggest tombs we say dated back to the 1600’s, pretty crazy! We then decided that we would go up to the castle and have a look around there. It was quite a hike to get up there because it basically is the high road (also called Old Town) in Edinburgh (but not the highest point, we did that later). Once we got up there we found out that it was 9GBP to get in and we didn’t really think that it was worth it to go in so we decided to walk down the main strip instead. There were tons of shops and little hole in the wall place and it was so great to walk down the cobblestone road. We were all getting pretty hungry so we stopped at a jacket potato shop where I had the largest potato of my life. I didn’t even eat ½ of the potato and I was totally stuffed! We then continued to walk down the main street again and we came to this really cool looking building at the end of the street it looked very modern and was mostly silver with light oak accents. We finally figured out that it was the parliament building, what a totally awesome government building! We then got to the end of the street where the palace for all the royalty was (I think that is was called the Hollyrood House or something along those lines… I should probably figure that out and get my facts straight… ehh I’ll do it later). Anyways, it was closed so we decided to take a hike in the “park” that was off to the right of the palace, one of our books said that you could have a great view of Edinburgh up there so we started our hike. We thought that we were going to die! It was so cold and we were climbing up hill with the wind whipping around the rocks trying to knock us over. I felt like I was Frodo Baggins trying to climb the cliffs with Sam and Gollum, seriously it even looked similar. We finally got to the top of the path (which was still 100 feet below the top of the rocks) and we were happy to find that there was a decent view from up there we spent a while just walking around the flatland/hillish stuff until it was almost dark. It was so calming to be up there above everything and we had a great time watching 4 kids run around the rocks and through the tall dying grass. Before it got to dark (it was only 3pm and the sun was already ¾ set) we decided to head back down, which was a much better trek than our initial ascent. For this walk I felt like Maximus in Gladiator as he is walking through the wheat after he dies, it was very peaceful but still freezing cold. It made me really want to watch Gladiator. Once we got down we headed back for the city and on the way we passed the parliament building again and all along the side of the building there were different quotes by famous people and there was a passage from Psalm 19, it was really cool to see that on the side of a government building (definitely not something you would see in America). I needed to find a bank to get some cash so we went over to new town and Annie really needed to sit and take a breather so Jamye and Annie stayed at Costa Coffee while I tried to go get money. It was quite an adventure finding the cash machine because the directions that two different people gave me were wrong and when I finally asked a guy in one of the shops where it was I found out that I had been going to wrong way. That was a little annoying but I finally got the money and we went back to old town so that I could buy some things that I had my eye on throughout the day. Around 6:30 we went to where the shuttle for our hostel was supposed to come pick us up. Unfortunately there were a ton of people already waiting because the shuttle was running behind so 45 minutes later we were finally on our way back to the hostel. Once we got there I was officially hungry and bought a pizza from the little shop and cooked it in one of the many ovens that we had in our kitchen. The more I was in the hostel the more I loved it, you could do anything you wanted in the kitchen and the shop had a lot of really great stuff for cooking. There was a small group of us just sitting and talking while I ate (the other girls were still full from their potatoes) and that when Jamye commented that my face looked swollen. I went to go check it out and sure enough I had bigger checks that were kind of blotchy and my normally well defined jaw line was basically gone. I had no idea what had happened, I just figured that I got a little bit of sun poisoning. I felt alright so we all went to see what movie was playing, and you’ll never believe this but it was Gladiator! Isn’t that totally insane? So we all watched that and once that was finished we asked them to put on Erin Brockavich (sp?). As the movie played I felt myself getting hotter so after the movie I called home and asked Dr. Mom if I was going to die. She said I wouldn’t die but she didn’t know what was going on so I took some drugs and hung out in the room. It was really hard for me to be in there for very long because there was so much talk about marriage I thought that I was going to barf, alright not really but I had heard enough for a little while about getting engaged and when weddings were going to be. I decided that the famous “ring by spring” is quickly turning into “ring by Christmas,” so sad. Paul called at that point and I was most pleased to be preoccupied by our conversation rather than the girls’. I went to bed pretty late but once I finally fell asleep I had a good nights sleep.
13 Sunday
I woke up around 8:30 and showered, ate, and packed up my stuff to checkout. Once we were checked out the girls and I decided to go down to the water which was out the back side of our hostel. None of us had been down there yet so we didn’t know what to expect but it was absolutely amazing. We walked down to the water that was about 50 yards away and I got to touch the freezing North Sea. The water was pretty calm and there were some rocks that we climbed around on. Before we were all totally frozen to the bone because of the beach breeze we went back up to the hostel and got a ride into town. We didn’t really have too much more to do there so we walked around and did a little bit more shopping before catching our train back home. The train ride was wonderful and so beautiful, most of the trip the sun was in my eyes but it felt so good! I saw tons of miniature horses and was really frustrated that every time I tried to take a picture there wouldn’t be any close enough for me to take a picture of. It was relatively peaceful in our carriage because the reservations that we got were in the “quite carriage” so that people could sleep if they wanted to.
I had to be at a concert at Barbican Hall that evening so we had planned to get back in plenty of time for me to go home, change, eat, and be on my way again. But things got rather interesting on our carriage about 10 minutes before we came into the station. Earlier there were two men who were checking tickets (for real checking tickets not just the normal asking to see it and then move on) and they were being very specific in what kind of tickets people were supposed to have. The three of us were fine but I guess there were several gentlemen a few carriages down who didn’t have a ticket. A man and one of the ticket people came through our carriage and the next thing I hear is the ticket man yelling at the man (who ducked into the toilet at the end of the carriage) to come out at once or he would lock him in there until the train got into the station. There was quite a commotion for a few minutes and then the other ticket man came through and jokingly told all of us who were paying attention to what was going on that we should “always remember to have a ticket.” As we approached the station an announcement was made that no one was allowed off the carriage until the transport police were on the platform. Luckily it was only a couple if minutes that we had to wait on the train but we were already quite late in arriving because of the whole ordeal. I rushed home (well as fast as public transportation would allow) and ran to my room and changed faster than I think that I ever had before and ran back out. There was a ton of traffic but I made it onto a bus that was a ways down the street and ate the sandwich that I had bought earlier. I got to the concert hall 5 minutes before it started (that was a miracle because the tube took 10 minutes less than it normally would have).
The concert was phenomenal, it was a tribute to Tschaikovski including Romeo and Juliet. It was great to be one of about 30 teenagers there out of 2000, everyone else was at least 40, many over 60 and quite a few native Russians there. It was a great evening and I was so thankful I made it. I think that he might be my favorite composer but I don’t know if I can really make that bold of a statement. I came home and went to bed after a rather exhausting day but very excited about everything that had happened.
That's all for now folks!