Ramblings of Naiveté

Boy, am I glad that Michelle and I decided that we wanted to go to Edinburg! I loved it a lot more than I was expecting to, so this is going to be a long entry. Originally, I typed all of this up as an email for Andrew but I edited it to make it more of a blogpost. So, here it goeees!

Let’s start with Thursday. I took the bus to the train station on Thursday morning to meet Alex and Michelle and then took an hour long train ride to a train station right outside of London and then we had to take another train to London… In London, we had to take the tube to yet another train station, Kings Cross, in order to get on another train that would take us to Edinburgh. It was quite a complicated trip and we just barely made it to our last train. We had to run to the platform and we made it with only 2 minutes to spare. It took us about 7 hours altogether to get to Edinburg by train(s) but it actually wasn’t that bad. I read, wrote postcards, and watched HIMYM to keep myself busy. I also slept for a few hours. :P By the time we got there, it was around 6pm, so we checked into our hostel and then just walked around. We stayed at a hostel right across the street from the train station, so I didn’t have to carry my luggage too far. I realized that I had packed a lot because I brought a backpack and a decent sized duffle bag on wheels. Carrying that bag on and off trains strained my wrist, and so it hurt a lot that day. I know that my ganglion cyst was still there on Thursday because I would hold my wrist in that area to keep it from bending when I was sitting on the train because it would hurt. Anyway, when walking around with Alex and Michelle, I noticed how much I liked the architecture in Edinburg. There are some modern buildings, but a lot are older and have more of a historical feel to them than the buildings in Brighton. When you see the pictures, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Buildings in Edinburg are made of stone and even some of the streets are cobblestoned! There are also a lot of narrow alleys with names like “Fleshmarket Close” where the word “close” stands for enclosure. Those were really fun/creepy to walk through at night and when we would pass them, I’d always look into them and say “OoOo” because there would always be something cool on the other side. xP We found a lot on Thursday night and we also walked past a bunch of shops, a theatre house, and a cinema. When we saw the cinema, we decided that we might want to watch a movie there because it was cheaper there than we had seen before. It cost about £5 to watch a movie there, which is about $8… but in London and a cinema in Brighton, it cost about £12, which is about $17. o__O Yeah, so we contemplated about watching a movie in Endinburg. That night though, we just ate dinner at an Italian place and then went back to the hostel to drink a bit. That’s when I sent you the picture of the cocktail drinks. That night, we just ordered a shot of whiskey, because Michelle had never had it before, and our own mixed drink. The mixed drinks looked pretty but they were just okay tasting. We were kind of disappointed. After that, though, we were perfectly okay and just hung out in the hostel before getting ready for bed and sleeping.

Now, I’m going to go off on a slight tangent about hostels. They are very interesting and are usually located in older buildings that were onced used for something else. Apparently the hostel that I stayed at in London was once an old courthouse or something. I’m not sure what the one in Edinburg used to be, but it was 4+ stories high and pretty neat. There was a bar underneath and it had free wifi! :) In hostels, you can have private rooms or choose to stay in rooms with other people. The room that Alex booked in Edinburg had 11 other people in it, so 14 people total. We stayed in bunk beds that weren’t that bad. We also had two showers and two toilets to our room, so it was pretty convenient. It’s always a bit odd to stay in the same room as other people, though, because people sleep/wake up at different times and we usually have to be as quiet as possible when moving about in the room. Also, people snore… especially the guy that was sleeping in the bunk across from me. I think that I woke up twice because of him snoring one time. Too bad I didn’t have my earplugs. :P

Okay, so back to the story and onto Friday! In the morning, we had breakfast at the hostel and then went off exploring again. We decided that we had time to go find Elephanthouse Cafe before we went on a tour. This is the cafe that JK Rowling would go to when she was writing Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone. Initially, we thought it was called Elephant and Bagels cafe because that’s what Michelle’s iPhone told us when we looked it up… but when we got to that cafe, I knew it wasn’t right and we looked it up again. Luckily, we were close to the actual cafe and got there within a few minutes. We took pictures and then ordered drinks there. They make pretty designs on the coffee! :D While there, we just sat and reveled in the fact that JK Rowling wrote HP1 there. Haha. xP After that, we walked around a little bit more and then headed back towards our hostel to a Starbucks where our tour would be meeting. When planning the trip, Alex and Michelle decided that we were going to go on a Sandeman’s tour, which is a tour given by a group that leads many many tours around Europe. There’s a few in London, some in Paris, Madrid, etc. Alex and Michelle had gone on a few before and loved them. The one we went on in Edinburg was free, but we tipped at the end. It was pretty good and we learned a lot about the city’s history while seeing a bunch of tourist places. One of the places we saw was the location of the old tax house that was turned into a heart design on the side of the street. Apparently, it’s good luck if you spit in the middle of it, so people spit. I didn’t want to spit in front of other people, but I was told that I spit into it later that night when I was drunk. I only kind of remember doing that, but that is a later part of the story. On the tour, we also saw Edinburg castle, the Scottish monument, churches, St. Giles Cathedral, places were people were hung, a graveyard, and a garden that was once a lake of poop. After the tour, we went to a pub with the group and ate haggis for the first time! We ate it with neeps and tatties, which are mashed turnip and potatoes. It was really good! At the pub, when our tour guide asked us what we were going to do later on in the day, we said that we wanted to watch a movie at the cinema because it was cheaper in Edinburg than in Brighton or London… and then people made fun of us! Which was understandable, I guess, because we were in such a cool place that it seemed a bit ridiculous to just watch a movie inside. But, we wanted the experience of watching a movie in England and decided it would be cheaper to watch one there. I guess we really weren’t meant to watch a movie, though, because when we walked to the cinema afterwards, there weren’t any movies that we really wanted to watch at a time that would fit into our schedule. So, instead of watching a movie, we did a bit of shopping and more walking around instead. After that, we ate dinner and met up for a pub crawl.

Pub crawls are when groups meet up to go to different pubs in the area. The Sandeman’s tour group led a pub crawl for a reasonable price that included a few shots, so we decided to go on it. I’m really glad that we went, because it turned out to be a really fun night. We went to 5 bars in total and a nightclub within a timespan of about 4.5 hours. At the first bar, Michelle and I had a white wine while Alex had a beer. We kind of just hung out and talked for a while until two random girls (whose names we found to be Alicia and Caitlyn) also from the pub crawl, approached us and started a conversation. Apparently, they both are 3rd years at Chapman back in California. They were really nice and a little tipsy since they had pre-partied at their hotel. They’re studying in London and offered to let us stay in their dorm room when we go next time! So we might actually take them up on that offer. xP They know a girl that I went to high school with, so I’m going to assume that they’re not crazy or anything. But yeah, for the rest of the night, we talked to them and other people from the pub crawl as we all loosened up from the alcohol. The second bar was the one located at hour hostel, and there we ended up drinking the most. There, everyone in the pub crawl had a jager bomb from a train that looked really cool because the shots got knocked in via a domino effect. After that, we went to the third bar that had pretty good live music. Since we felt a lot less inhibited at that point, we talked to other people that included a girl from Seattle, Washington and a girl from Canada. The walk to the fourth pub was a little bit further and I guess I don’t really remember too much of that walk. It was less than a 10 minute walk, though… But I guess we passed by the heart design again and that’s when I spit into it. xP (I only sort of remembered that when Michelle told me that I did when we passed by it for the 3rd time on the last day in Edinburgh.) After Michelle and I had walked out of the bathroom at the 4th pub, we were approached by a rugby player named Lloyd who introduced us to his boyfriend. At first we thought he was joking about the boyfriend thing, but then we saw a heart shaped tattoo on the other guy’s chest that said Lloyd in the middle. I guess Lloyd, the other guy, and one of our pub crawl guides all play rugby together and they invited us to a game the next day. We didn’t go because 1) we had no idea where they were playing and 2) we had other plans. But it was really interesting… and random. We even talked to their team manager that was ther. o_O Haha, I don’t even know why we talked to them.. I think that they were just standing at the bar while we were ordering water. Anyway, after that one, we made our way to the last pub which was located right next to the Elephanthouse Cafe. There, we took a sourz shot from a test tube and had 2 shots. I’m not really sure why we had those two shots… I think it was because we owed Alicia a shot since she bought us one. Nothing really happened at the pub after that… and when we got to the nightclub, we pretty much walked in and then out. We knew we were done for the night, so we asked our completely sober pub crawl guides how to get back to our hostel and thankfully, we made it back. It’s interesting how your brain still sort of works when you’re intoxicated… you’re just not exactly conscious of it working so well. Anyway, we got back okay, changed, and went to sleep. I felt sick for a couple minutes before sleeping and I couldn’t lay down right away, but I managed to sleep without getting sick. :) The next morning, though, I had quite a dizzy first few hours…

Line of Jager bombs.

The next morning, the three of us woke up slightly dizzy but I think that I was the worst. I moved a lot more slowly that morning and my dizziness lasted longer, which I guess makes sense because I drank as much as Alex and I’m smaller… but I felt bad for being so slow to get ready since Alex, Michelle, and I had planned to walk up a hill to get to an area called Arthur’s seat. It’s a peak with an incredible view of the city that we had learned about during the tour and we were told that it would only take about 40 minutes to go up and that the trail was fairly easy. Well, it wasn’t as easy as we thought, especially since I was very very slightly hungover at that point. There are multiple trails leading up to Arthur’s seat and we chose one of the more difficult ones that took us all the way around the steeper side of the hill. We started at the easier side and didn’t know that there were multiple trails, so we just ended up choosing one and found that it was steep and incredibly windy (25 mph wind, I think). It was so windy that Michelle and I had to stop several times to regain our balance. I actually got legitimately scared of being pushed by the wind down the side of the hill. Thankfully though, we made it to the top where it was even more windy! But it did have an beautiful view of the city and we felt really accomplished to have gotten up. On the way down, we discovered the easier trail and joked about how we missed it but it was okay because going up the harder trail made us appreciate the easier trail so much more. xP We also discovered a pond with SWANS in it! :D :D :D It made me really happy because it reminded me of scenes of a movie or a book. The pond wasn’t too big and there were swans, ducks, and other birds flying around. It reminded me of The Ugly Duckling actually. We spent a little bit of time there… maybe 15-20 minutes taking pictures and just enjoying the scenery. I kept thinking about how my dad would love to be at a place like that and about how I wanted to show him, Andrew, and lots of other people the place.

Part of the pond.

Sort of a view from Arthur’s seat. Michelle has better pictures. :P

After that, we got lunch at a place called Chocolatesoup that served sandwiches, soup, coffe, and chocolatey-drinks. It was very nommy. :D After lunch, we went to the Scottish National Gallery museum and it was hugeee.. and free! And awesome. I think that it’s almost as cool as the California Academy of Sciences museum in SF because it had so many exhibits! We didn’t get to go through everything, we we did find Dolly the cloned sheep! When it closed, Michelle and I had decided that we wanted to purchase Harry Potter books at a bookstore so that we could say that we bought the book where it was written! So, we found a bookstore and got HP1. I also got two other books and a bookmark souvenir for Mia. Admittedly, I did spend too much money at the bookstore. ^^; But, I’m fairly sure that it was worth it. I think that, because it’s part of my senior year and because I’m on a once in a lifetime type of trip/experience, I’m not as worried about money as I am at home. I want to make this experience worth it and if I spend money on travelling, new types of food, etc, I can’t be too stressed out about it. But yeah… I’m going to definitely have to find a job back in SD. Mmmm, after finding books and walking around some more, we didn’t really do too much. We went on a ghost tour later that night, but it turned out to be kind of lame. We walked across a bridge at night, visited another graveyard, and visited other famous places in the city but it wasn’t too exciting.

On Sunday, we didn’t do that much since our train left to go back to Brighton at 2pm. We just walked to Edinburg castle and had coffee one last time at the Elephanthouse Cafe. We stopped by the Scottish National Gallery that had a bunch of paintings by famous artists, but we didn’t spend too much time there. After that, we got our stuff from the hostel, went to the train station, and went homeeee. And that’s basically the end of my Edinburgh trip. At the beginning of the trip, I was regretting my choice not to study at the University of Edinburg. My uncle had told me to study there, instead, because it was very diverse, lively, and a good school. One of the only reasons why I made it my 2nd choice instead of my 1st was because Edinburgh is in Scotland, not England. Also the University of Edinburgh is more competitive, though I probably would’ve still been able to make it in. Edinburgh has so much more appeal to me than Brighton… Brighton is too much like home but not enough like home at the same time, while Edinburg is something completely new. New architecture, multiple story buildings, and the city has a castle AND a palace! Plus, Harry Potter was written there. I’m still regretting my choice not to choose Univ. of Edinburgh, but I’m so happy that I got to visit. I wasn’t even really planning to go visit until Michelle agreed with me that we should make a trip over there… but yeah. I loved it there. :) I promised myself that one day, I will come back to visit no matter what! :P