Monday:
Janelle and I woke up at 4 in the morning to catch our 6:30 flight. When we arrived in Edinburgh, we went straight to out hostel to take a wee little nape.
Then at 10:30, we went on the free walking tour: which was awesome!
[The girl in the plaid with the red bow in her hair is our tour guide, Andra. She was incredible. She was from Canada, which a surprising amount of young people in Edinburgh are from!]
[I forget which King this is, but he tried so hard to be liked by the people. However, this statue ended up looking like he was riding a donkey who was peeing and drunk because they put a hole in the the horses butt so when it rained (which it often does) it looked conspicuous and the King was much bigger than the horse.]
[Do not walk on this if you see it in Edinburgh. It's the only place someone can spit.]
[Note that the third step up is the trick step; or the 16th-century bugler alarm. Once they step on that step, down they go, waking the entire house and possibly killing the intruder.]
[One of the MANY flights of stairs you will see that we went down. It was hell. The entire city was on a volcano.]
[One shot of Edinburgh Castle.]
[This is the window J.K. Rowling sat at as she wrote the first few Harry Potter books. More of this to come.]
[These are bars around a grave to protect it from grave robbers.]
[This is the grave of a man who maintained the graveyard. When he died, his lovely companion, a cute little dog, sat on his grave for 14 years until he to later died.]
[this is the dog.]
[I believe this is Victoria Park. Some thing like that.]
[View of Edinburgh Castle from outside out hostel: Castle Rock Hostel.]
[More Steps!]
[Front part of Edinburgh Castle.]
[Building facing Edinburgh Castle.]
[view from Edinburgh Castle.]
[Deep Fried Mars Bar: surprisingly delicious.]
[More staircases.]
[The Royal Mile.]
[In our hostel each room is themed.]
[As is each bed: this one is mine.]
That night we went on a Ghost Tour of the city. It actually was more factual that scary, lucky for me. The best part was the free pint at the end of the tour. We met this really cool lady on the tour with us: a lawyer from D.C. She's been talking about all her different travels the past year in Europe, then finally she tells us at the bar that she'd been traveling so much because she beat cancer last year and decided she wasn't going to wait anymore and just do it. She is my hero.
Tuesday:
Janelle and I woke up at the butt crack of dawn again to go on a Loch Ness/Highlands Bus Tour for 12 hours. It was beautiful. This was our first stop.
[These are the Highlands.]
[the canal leading up to Loch Ness.]
[The boat we went on.]
[Janelle and I on the boat on the Loch Ness.]
[The Loch Ness! This lake is freakin huge. If you emptied all of it's contents over Whales and England it would cover both countries with 6 feet of water!]
[This rock slide is said the be where Nessie tried to escape, but failed.]
[Do you see Nessie?]
[How bout now?]
[It was nice to see that Nessie had started a family! That way he's (or she) is not so lonely in that fast lake.]
[After the lake, we made out trek back to Edinburgh and stopped several times to look at all the beautiful scenery of the Highlands of Scotland.]
[I'm not quite sure the technical name of this animal is. My guide, at times, at a very strong Scottish accent, so to us it sounded like he was saying 'Hairy Cow'.]
[It rained off and on throughout the day, so we were graced with the presence of several beautiful rainbows!]
[It's hard to see but that's Sterling Castle.]
That night, Janelle and I were too exhausted to go out. So, our awesome hostel showed free movies in their movie theatre! so we watched Aviator with Leonardo DiCaprio. Great film and acting, but not my cup of tea as far as story line goes.Wednesday:
We hiked Arthur's Seat! I almost died from the altitude and steepness. This is when we realized how out of shape we had both gotten.
[The beginning of the hike!]
[The following is of the fantastic view of one of my favorite cities in the world: Edinburgh.]
[Half of the mountain we didn't climb because we couldn't figure out to get up there without being legit rock climbers.]
[The rest of the day we walked around Edinburgh, looking at the sights, gift shopping, hiking up massive amounts of stairs and hills.]
[Jacob built a ladder to lead him up to Heaven. Guess where going down get's you?]
[The Scottish tried copying the pillars of Rome and didn't even finish it. The citizens call it the (Insert Swear Word) of Edinburgh.]
[THIS IS WHERE J.K. ROWLING WROTE THE FIRST FEW HARRY POTTER'S!]
[The restaraunt itself was delicious and so cute. And incredibly cheap! I got half a pizza and salad for just over three pounds! AND they have a student discount, which always gets my vote!]
[You can't really see it, but it says Fluer's Fantasy as a alcoholic drink. That made me laugh a little. I can just see a little kid see that and being, like, mommy I want that!]
[This is where she sat as she wrote the first few Harry POtter's!]
[This is for my parents: you can't really see him at all, but there was this guy standing at the bus station that looked EXACTLY like the child snatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He was super pasty and tall and lanky and he had thin lips and a pointy nose. And he kept looking my way eerily. I was creeped out. Of course, then I because the creeper and took a picture of him over my shoulder...]
[We went to the Museum of Scotland and saw Dolly the first cloned sheep!]
[I also went into space on my trip in Edinburgh.]
[One of the oldest locomotives.]
All I've been doing since I got back is packing and going into the City Centre as much as possible. It's FINALLY been sunny every day (of course, right?).
I've been saying how ready I am. That changed esterday when I realized I was actually leaving.
I dont want to anymore.
It's been a privaledge sharing my adventures with you all.
I hope you enjoyed my incredible comentary and pictures. I know, I'm pretty awesome.
Much Love. Cheers. Kt.
