Edinburgh, Scotland

Ok, so I'm ready to try to tackle my trip...one city at a time. Beginning with Edinburgh.

It still amazes me how I easy it is to travel here. I jumped on a train in Lyon, chilled for 2 hours, arrived in Paris, caught a couple metros, jumped on a plane, and less than 2 hours later I was giving Katie a big hug in Edinburgh, and then we caught a bus and were dropped off about 10 minutes away from our hostel. The only unfortunate part of the whole thing was having to trek up a relatively steep hill with our big ol' backpacks on. And there we were, at the High Street Hostel in Edinburgh, which may be one of my favorite places ever. I don't by any means consider myself an expert on hostels, but I'm getting used to them, and this one was just plain awesome. The staff was amazing, and it was a totally funky place with murals on the walls and a giant stuffed shark (which I failed to take a picture of...which I regret now as it was amazing) and all sorts of cool people staying there. Upon arrival, Katie and I dropped our backpacks off in the room with our beds, Edinburgh (Katie) and Falkirk (me), and went off in search of something quick and easy to eat. We grabbed a sandwich and some apples at a convenient store down the street (pretty much the only not at least a little bit exciting food of the whole trip, although the apples were amazing and we got 3 for 1 pound). We took the food back to the hostel and ate it in the lounge, while sipping deliciously free hot chocolate and smelling all the delicious food that people were cooking in the giant kitchen. Soon after, we were in bed reading...we decided to start off the trip with a good night's sleep.

The next morning we woke up and ate meusli and scones before going on a free tour of the city. If you are ever in Europe, look for the NewEurope tour, which they have in most major cities. It's basically a free tour, although the tour guides don't actually get paid so they usually ask for a little something in return, but from my experience they are totally worth it. They usually have one 3 hour tour of the city and then another shorter themed tour...and I think a lot of times they do a pub crawl as well. Anyway, over the course of the three hours, we saw the majority of Edinburgh's old city (which is actually quite small) and heard a lot of interesting histories and stories about the different buildings in monuments. The major stops were St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh Castle, and this big park that runs between the new city and the old city. We also saw the oldest building in Edinburgh, the school that inspired Hogwarts and the café where J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book, the old prison, a cemetery, and heard stories about the Stone of Destiny, Greyfriar's Bobby (quite possibly the coolest dog ever), and the history of the term "rip off," which apparently originated right in the middle of Edinburgh. And we took a lunch break during which we paid 5 pounds for a hamburger (or veggie burger in my case) and a pint.

Which actually brings me to the food portion of this blog. I LOVE Scotland because it is SO easy to find vegetarian food. I'm so used to going out to eat and having to order fish. Don't get me wrong, I like fish, but I prefer not to eat it all the time because fishing practices really aren't all that much better than other meat-production practices (my main reasons for being a veg-head). But they had veggie burgers in Scotland! AND vegetarian haggis. I guess you could say that defeats the purpose of the meal, but I was assured that the neeps and tatties (turnips and potatoes) made it worth it. Plus I kind of like fake sausages, which were the substitute for stomach and internal organs. Other than haggis and veggie burgers, we also had fish n chips and baked potatoes at a little restaurant dedicated to baked potatoes (which was a vegetarian/vegan restaurant...YES!). And amazing deserts, my favorite of which was called cranachan and was kind of like a berry parfait with oats...ie quite possibly my favorite thing ever. Oh, and can't forget the shortbread cookies and the fudge we bought at the fudge kitchen. Basically the food in Scotland was amazing.

The shopping in Scotland was also amazing. If their veg-friendliness wasn't enough to draw me in, their fashions were. There were so many funky little clothing shops all over the place. For those of you in Burque, think Beeps only they have clothes too, and all over the place. And even better, if you can stretch your mind that far. And to satisfy my preppy side, there were cashmere argyle sweaters everywhere. I didn't buy one because, even on sale, they were ridiculously expensive, although now I'm starting to think I should have splurged. Maybe I'll just have to go back (shucks!). The new city was basically all shopping, and we did our share of wandering around there, although I much preferred the old city with its funky shops and old buildings and whatnot to the new city with it's brand name stores that you find pretty much everywhere in Europe (not that I'm not glad we hit up all the H&Ms that we could on this trip).

Other than eating and shopping, we mostly just wandered a lot. Edinburgh is actually really small, so it's a great place to just walk around and look at old buildings. Might sound boring, but it totally wasn't. It was really fun. We also ended up hanging at the hostel a lot, reading, listening to music, and chatting with the other people staying there. And taking full advantage of the free tea, hot chocolate, and coffee offered. I was really amazed at how many people were there for like 2 months, just taking time off and living in a different country and doing it all in a hostel. Most of them worked in bars or restaurants or handing out free newspapers to pay the bills, but some of them really just seemed like they were bumming around, which to me seems really strange. I'm not sure it's something I would want to do because I don't do well without purpose, but at the same time, it's kind of an intriguing idea (Dear family, don't worry, I won't drop out of school and move into a hostel and do nothing but go out drinking and sleeping for two months). By far my and Katie's favorite of the other hostel residents was this really fabulous guy named Toby, who was from London, I think. We went out with him, 2 germans, and a canadian girl one night to a pub called Finnegan's Wake (like the Dropkick Murphy's song!!!) and to the Jazz Bar, where we listened to decent but not fabulous jazz music, before heading back to the hostel to sleep.

Um...I think maybe that's it for Edinburgh...oh! except for the BEST part, which was the Museum of Childhood, which was a prime place for us to have fun and take silly pictures. With the exception of the doll room, which was just creepy, the museum was full of fun old toys and there were a lot of interactive things, like games and dress up, etc. SO much fun!!!

And there you have it. I'm going to take a wee break, but I'll try to get to Amsterdam tonight. Because I know everyone is just itching to read more (nevermind that pretty much everyone who reads this is probably asleep).

Biz.

(ps. I would like to add a little countdown...11 days til I'm home!)