8 months ago

We arrived in Edinburgh, Scotland after an 8 hour bus ride through the night from London. 50mg of Benadryl had no effect on either of us so we arrived quite sluggish and wishing we had somewhere to lay our heads. Our backpacks weren’t getting any lighter so we say for breakfast and quickly devised a plan for the next 21 hours. First stop was the Edinburgh museum where we could store our bags for free! We quickly realized Edinburgh is more welcoming to large backpacks than London and we were on our way. I fell in love with Edinburgh. Gothic architecture towers over the city that can easily be taken by foot- the largest of the buildings being the Edinburgh castle. In round about ten minutes up the northwest end of the city the landscape drastically changes to bright green rolling hills and further still the Atlantic ocean. Surreal. We climbed 287 steps to the top of the Scott monument erected in 1840 as a tribute to sir Walter Scott for another breathtaking view. Finally we decided our time and dollars would best be spent on a free tour hosted by NewEurope. Four hours later we had been introduced to the rich and outright cruel history of Edinburgh. Our tour guide Stephen had the entire group in hysteria as his interpretations and very dramatic replications of history stopped many in the streets. Arriving at the end of our tour we joined Stephen for some famous Scottish Haggis at a local pub. Haggis is like a hot dog…a food you want to eat and never know the contents, but ill share them with you anyway: sheep ‘pluck’ which consists of the liver, lungs and heart as well as some other items simmered for 3 hours in the animal’s stomach. Gross…I didn’t think it tasted much better than how it sounds either. As exhausted as we were at this point we were anxious to arrive at our hostel and get to bed early. Our train to Aberdeen was to leave the next morning at 0530. As many of you have already witnessed a large man from Liverpool and another young buck from Romania had very different ideas as to how the evening and wee hours of the morning would play out, which left Micah and I crunched in one twin bunk bed (heaven help me if I was sleeping alone in those surroundings) for another sleepless night.

We arrived in Edinburgh, Scotland after an 8 hour bus ride through the night from London. 50mg of Benadryl had no effect on either of us so we arrived quite sluggish and wishing we had somewhere to lay our heads. Our backpacks weren’t getting any lighter so we say for breakfast and quickly devised a plan for the next 21 hours. First stop was the Edinburgh museum where we could store our bags for free! We quickly realized Edinburgh is more welcoming to large backpacks than London and we were on our way. I fell in love with Edinburgh. Gothic architecture towers over the city that can easily be taken by foot- the largest of the buildings being the Edinburgh castle. In round about ten minutes up the northwest end of the city the landscape drastically changes to bright green rolling hills and further still the Atlantic ocean. Surreal. We climbed 287 steps to the top of the Scott monument erected in 1840 as a tribute to sir Walter Scott for another breathtaking view. Finally we decided our time and dollars would best be spent on a free tour hosted by NewEurope. Four hours later we had been introduced to the rich and outright cruel history of Edinburgh. Our tour guide Stephen had the entire group in hysteria as his interpretations and very dramatic replications of history stopped many in the streets. Arriving at the end of our tour we joined Stephen for some famous Scottish Haggis at a local pub. Haggis is like a hot dog…a food you want to eat and never know the contents, but ill share them with you anyway: sheep ‘pluck’ which consists of the liver, lungs and heart as well as some other items simmered for 3 hours in the animal’s stomach. Gross…I didn’t think it tasted much better than how it sounds either. As exhausted as we were at this point we were anxious to arrive at our hostel and get to bed early. Our train to Aberdeen was to leave the next morning at 0530. As many of you have already witnessed a large man from Liverpool and another young buck from Romania had very different ideas as to how the evening and wee hours of the morning would play out, which left Micah and I crunched in one twin bunk bed (heaven help me if I was sleeping alone in those surroundings) for another sleepless night.