Scenic Scotland

Edinburgh is Cool!

Although the bus ride wasn't... not only did I have to miss out on much of the very good live jazz @ the St Martin-in-the-fields crypt (my hyde pk friends didn't turn up?!?! their loss...) , but there was only Burger King coffee when I was waiting, and I had a blimp guy on one side of me and a crazy (probably drunk) scottish guy "are we in scotland yet? did we stop off last night"... mumbling tons... hrmm... and this one time when I felt something touching my head and looked up and he had this bottle of softdrink in his hand leaning over my seat (I don't think it was opened).... yes very strange!

The bus ride went from 10:30pm till about 7:50am. I climbed out of the bus, and when I was streching my legs about to walk I met Seb(astian) and Steve from Canada. They had just met during the bus trip. After not following this dodgey scottish B&B guy trying to invite us over, we started exploring. It's really scenic here... quite hilly. Whoever decided to build a city here really had a sense of the dramatic... Edinburgh castle is stuck high on this hill, and there are other cliffs that you can see from around the place. It's kinda misty in the distance... and very green everywhere. Tons of little lanes and walkways. It is sooo much more relaxed than London... I think many of the touristy shops were opening up after 10:30!

I'm staying in Edinburgh tonight and tomorrow, but I'll go on a day trip to Glasgow tomorrow. I think it only costs about £5 to travel there and back. I have yet to decide if I'll go to Motherwell, which is one of the cities where my ancestors came from... but it's not far from Glasgow at all so I might as well.

You should see the hostel I'm staying in. It's called "The Castle Rock", and is just across the road from Edinburgh Castle (where they are setting up seats for the Royal Tattoo... anyone know when it's on?). I'll have to take a photo from just outside the front door and send it to you... it's amazing! They've also really gone to town with interesting artwork everywhere, and it's quite clean. Brekky's not included, but we spotted a cheap cooked brekky available at BHS... yummm sausages, tomatoes and toast :-) For lunch we got pasties, sausage rolls etc for about 40 or 50p each, so that was close to Aus prices! MUCH better than London!

Auntie Isobel/Elsie... Pa said that (2 greats auntie removed somehow?) Mabel would be away. Is she going to be in Edinburgh or Glasgow? Supposedly she's not in Alloa between the 7th and 21st which is right when I'm nearby!!

Ohh I forgot to tell you about some funny stuff that happened at the last hostel! There was this weird guy from Moscow that came and slept in our dorm for 1 night. Sabine asked him questions like "what's your name" and "are you checking out today" and he was like "why do you need to know" and "I never checked in... no need to check out!" hrmm strange... he had no luggage!

Then there was this club near our hostel that we walked in just to see what it was like. We got to the door and this guy said "can I check your ID please" so we were all getting out our passports (tucked away for safety) and then the owner yelled "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!"... turns out the guy was just a drunk bum and was holding us all up! Weird entry to a place like that.

OK... that's all I have time for. Got to grab a snack and transfer my photos to a CD... £6.50 is expensive, but cheaper than processing over 200 normal photos!

Adios amigos!

Sammy.

Posted by Sam at September 12, 2002 11:48 PM