So we just got back from our weekend in Edinburgh. It was great. We took the train up on Friday morning; it was a four and a half hour ride. The countryside was beautiful, though, and I did some reading, so it really wasn’t that bad. When we arrived in Edinburgh, we checked into our hostel, The Castle Rock Hostel, and unpacked our beds. Hostel living is an interesting thing. We were in an all girls’ dorm room of ten beds. The theme to our room was “Opposites,” and my personal bed was named “Lust and Rage.” They really saw me coming. After getting settled in and securing our belongings into the lockers, we headed over to the Elephant House, a famous coffee shop in Edinburgh where J.K. Rowling began writing Harry Potter. After some scones, we walked around Edinburgh a little more and then climbed a hill to look over the city and watch the sunset. Beautiful. We then went to dinner at a pub called Deacon Brodie’s. Supposedly it is also famous. I tried haggis—a famous Scottish dish. The real version is actually all the leftover parts of a sheep cooked together in a sheep bladder, but I took the safe route and tried the vegetarian version, although I’m not exactly sure what it was. It was good, but I’m glad I had some soup, too!
After dinner, a few of us went back to the hostel. Hostels are inexpensive places to stay, and for most, you have to be under 26 to get a bed. Several people were hanging out in the main areas of the hostel—the kitchen, game room, dining room, movie room (where we watched part of the Shawshank Redemption), and just around. Lots of teenagers/college age folks from all over the world. Pretty neat scene.
We went to bed relatively early because we had an early start on Saturday. Hayley, Claire, Emily and I booked a coach tour with a company to go see Loch Ness. We were on the coach for over 10 hours, but we also got to get off at several gorgeous spots across Scotland. No sign of Mel Gibson or Nessie, but I did see a few look alikes.
Today we toured Edinburgh. We had breakfast at the Elephant House, saw the castle, walked the Royal Mile, saw the burial place of John Knox (in a parking lot!), saw Holyrood Palace (where the Queen stays when she visits Scotland), had a great lunch, did some shopping, and got back on the train to come back to London. The ride was lengthy, but Hayley and I shared a table with a young English engineer, so we made a new friend.
