I will now recount the stories of our second day in Edinburgh. We woke up bright and early; too bad we were all exhausted because of the plethora of frenchmen (and women) who seemed to be constantly leaving or entering our hostel room. We pounded some coffee and nutella covered toast, then made a plan for the day. Laura and Sammy split off from the rest of the group because the plan was to go to the Castle, which laura has been to and Sammy will be going to with her family. The rest of us hiked up the beautiful path that led to the castle. We stopped to take frequent pictures, as the view was absolutely spectacular. When we got to the top, we were yet again mobbed by french people sporting all kinds of ridiculous apparel in their support of the french rugby team, playing scotland in the six nations. We bought our tickets ( I was ripped off because the ticket man wouldn't take my Cadoo card! ( which is basically a card that gets us discounts to heritage sites)), and made our way into the castle.
Future travelers, be warned; Edinburgh castle is a bit of a rip off. The views are amazing and the actual castle itself is quite remarkable, but the exhibits are wanting. We learned about the entire history of the crown jewels of Scotland with the aid of creepy life size figurines and somewhat annoying recordings. In my opinion, it took away from the actual beauty of the crown jewels rather than enhance them. I suppose its good for kids. The rest of the castle was similar, though the monument to WW1 soldiers was beautiful, and the history of the castle itself is quite interesting.
After that, we met up with Sammy, who had left Laura with her aunt who lives on a farm outside of Edinburgh. We went to a cute little cafe and ate our lunches that we mooched off the hostel breakfast. We then went to a knitting/ yarn store so Sammy could drool over some scottish wool. Our next mission was to climb Arthur's seat, a mountain on the outskirts of town that would allow us some pretty views of the whole city. To get there, we had to walk the entire royal mile, which, when viewed closely, is filled with oddities. For example, we stopped at the Museum of Childhood (or something like that) to use the bathroom, and we all left sufficiently creeped out. Life size models of children= creepy.
When we arrived at the base of Arthur's seat, I was taken aback at how weird it looked; it basically was a mountain sticking straight out of the middle of a city. As we climbed, we got further and further away from civilization, even though we weren't far from a main road at all. The paths were very muddy at the bottom and we all took bets on who would fall first. Most bets were on Jackie, who is notoriously good at falling on her bum. The climb was nice and even a bit challenging at the end; I told everyone to channel their inner mountain goat. When we made it to the top, we were utterly enveloped in a cloud, which made the whole experience quite mystical. We took some pictures and goofed around before heading down. Close to the bottom, we decided to branch off to check out a pond full of swans. Sammy said "if we go that way and I fall, I am blaming you" or something like that. Well you guessed it, Sammy fell and got a muddy knee. I guess she won the bet because she is the only one who voted for herself ! :)
The next place on our itinerary was the National Gallery of Scotland. We hoofed it all the way there and were greeted by a kindly old man who mapped out where we should go in the gallery. He also told us the story of St. Nicholas, who stood up an prayed when he was born, saved three girls from prostitution by leaving them a dowry, and saved three boys from being cooked alive. We followed his route and enjoyed the museum, even though we were all exhausted. There were a lot of great paintings of greek mythology, baby jesus, etc, with some notable ones like a Da Vinci and some nice Van Goughs. We particularly liked the section on Scottish artists. My favorite was a painting of Midsummer Night's Dream that had 165 fairies in it! On the way out, we thanked the nice man, but he decided to talk to us in french. Jackie was able to figure out that this was in tribute to the fact that France had beaten Scotland in the six nations match.
At this point, we were all so tired and hungry we practically ran to a pub. A lot of places were packed but we found a nice one called the Beehive. We ordered food and waited to meet up with Laura. We were only sitting their for a short time when we realized that a pack of men by the bar were being particularly rowdy. We gleaned from their copious drinking and singing that it was a bachelor party, done the Scottish way, which apparently means drinking out of boots. Laura finally joined us after we misled her because we thought we were in a different pub; just goes to show you how tired we were.
Next, we went on a free ghost tour that we had stumbled across the day before. It was short and very funny; our "ghost" tour guide picked on Laura the entire time practically, and he threw a rat, a bloody hand, and fake poop at the audience. Apparently Edinburgh has a gruesome past, with plenty of hangings and the like. We returned to the hostel for several rounds of cards (where I continued to get beaten), then headed out in search of a place to watch the Superbowl! Our luck was not good; all the pubs we came across either didnt have a TV or were not playing football. We walked all the way to a bar called sportsters, only to learn that it was a private gig that required 5 pounds entrance fee. We walked all the way back to another pub that had promised us earlier that they would play the superbowl. We settled in and watched the game while a loud live band played in the back. The band (and the game) was awesome, despite the frenchmen continuously trying to hit on Sammy and Casey. Go Saints!
When we finally got home, we watched the halftime show (without sound), and went to bed only to get up four hours later to jet back to Cardiff. What a weekend!
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