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Published: September 1st 2013
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The view from the hotel hallway
This city has a CASTLE. I'm still not over it So we landed, got through customs with a limited amount of struggle (protip: If you’re an overseas student, bring your CAS with you everywhere. The Scots love their paperwork), found our luggage, and hopped in a cab to our hotel. Our cabbie was a lovely fellow who was full of good advice about what to see and where to go. Apparently, he does day trips and if we are interested, we can call him up and he’ll create a tour for us. Nice dude. He drove J.K. Rowling home once. Apparently, her husband is lovely.
Anyway, he drops us off, helps offload our luggage, then leaves us to it. So we go inside and there are two flights of stairs to get to the lobby. Not huge flights, but still. Our bags are 50 pounds each, and we have to lug them up the stupid steps. Because I’m ridiculously lazy, I tried to grab on suitcase in each hand and carry both up at once. Luckily for me, I only had to lug them up one flight of stairs before a lovely gent helped me carry them.
So after this, we go to check in
and get told that we are at the wrong hotel. The hotel we are actually staying in bears the same name and is down those stupid stairs and up the street a spell. Because of this, we were privileged enough to be given the opportunity to carry our bags down the stairs, as well as up. Joy.
We made it to our real hotel and checked in without incident. The elevators are tiny though so we had to take up bags separately. Which wasn’t too terrible. On the really bright side, we’ve got a pretty good view of Edinburgh Castle from our hotel room.
We got into our room, got settled, I logged on to the free Wi-Fi (angels sang from the heavens), updated the ol’ blog, and immediately started bothering my friends via Skype, despite the fact that is was technically 4 in the morning in Toronto. Mom settled down for a nap and shortly after, I crashed as well.
I woke up again around 3 PM, Scottish time. Mom had the good sense to get up a bit earlier so she was just about ready to go. I had
a quick shower and got dressed and then sat around for a little bit because that’s a lot to do in a day.
We headed out to find a pub for some food. We ended up wandering into three different pubs but we didn’t know how to order so we gave up and left the first one. The second one was full, so we didn’t stay there. Incidentally, it is the oldest pub in Edinburgh; it has been functioning since the early 16
th century. Also, it’s the pub where Burke and Hare used to get their victims. Awesome. Anyway, we finally settled on a pub called The Beehive. We changed tables three times before we figured out how to get food. As it turns out, you have to order at the bar. I had my first legal drink (strawberry and lime cider. Stop judging me, Dad) and ordered a burger, which was quite delicious and came with a side of excellent barbecue sauce. I was thrilled (as always) to be eating food. Even if it was both dinner and breakfast. I’m just sad I slept through lunch.
We decide to wander a little bit
and see if we couldn’t find my university and residence. It was an easy five-ish minute walk to the main university buildings. I was very excited. I love the buildings. They’re so old and grand and academic. It thrills me.
Promptly after this, we got completely lost. What should have been a ten to twenty minute walk turned into one that lasted an hour and a half. But we saw a lot of the city and it was awesome. We both needed to pee rather badly and ended up in what mom believes is a lesbian bar but I’m pretty sure it’s a “Punk bar”, mostly because that’s what it said on the door. But looks can be deceiving so it might have been a cleverly disguised gay bar after all.
Finally, after we walked in a giant spiral, we found my residence hall. My mother, being the dorky tourist mother that she is, took several photos of me outside of the hall. We walked into the lobby, but the wings that actually contained the rooms were locked so we sort of loitered around until a kid walked in and unlocked one to get
to his room and then we sort of slunk in behind him and stopped the door from closing all the way. After the kid was safely out of sight in his room, we snuck in and took a quick look at where the rooms were. We have established that I am in the North wing and my room has a kick ass view. I am so pumped, guys. It’s gonna be good. I’m not allowed to move in yet, unfortunately, so we left the residence complex and hopped in a cab back to the hotel.
We hung around and chatted with my dad on Skype until 8:45 in the evening and then headed out to sit in the hall because the hall had a floor to ceiling window with an even better view of the castle. This was important because there was a firework show at 9. The official reason for the show is to celebrate the end of the Fringe festival but we all know better than that. It was totally in my honour. Because I am way awesome like that.
Anyway, the fireworks were awesome (Dad, you could learn a thing or
MY HALL OF RESIDENCE
I might cry. This doesn't feel real. two from these guys. Not that your fireworks don’t rock, because they do, but you’re missing a castle-esque backdrop) and we met some lovely fellow guests, two of whom were from Quebec. Small world.
And then we went to bed. We are non-stop party animals, yo. Well, mom went to bed, I typed and uploaded this blog. But yeah. Party animals to the max.
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I want to have your baby
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I know what that's about
Sometimes superheroes need to climb drainpipes to save the day. All those old buildings are obviously meth labs or elaborate organizations that systematically remove half to three quarters of the leaves from local tea bags. Because these operations are elicit according to the Queen, the proprietors have taken the prudent step of protecting against invasion by coating the pipes with slippy guck. The walls have anti webbing goo; the floors are kryptonite and the windows are magnetized inside and out, rendering all armor inoperable. I know these things. Dibs on firstborn.