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Little Mikka the mountain climber
Had to go for a walk up Arthurs Seat and although its not really a huge touristy thing it was one of the highlights of my trip so far!3 days has never flown by so quickly!! If you are in the Edinburgh and you are ever bored I only have 3 words for you, HAGGIS HAGGIS HAGGIS!!! And for those of you that went on the tour I only have a few words for you JOBBIE JOBBIE JOBBIE!! Can you imagine? It was a time of war! HAIRY COOOOOO! Minger! Look at his wee face! I’m so moist! Dead sexeh!
All right...where did I leave off?
Wednesday May 17th Gone for 1 month today. Happy 1 month anniversary travelling!! One month has never flown by so quickly and I don’t think that I have ever done or seen this much in one month in my whole life!! Some more Canadians showed up at the hostel last night, I swear we are taking that place over! Strange being at a club in Scotland with about 15 other Canadians! My breakfast sandwich was ordered off a girl from Kelowna this morning, I swear Canada will have taken over Edinburgh within the month. Woke up this morning with a bit of a hangover so what could possibly be a better cure for a hangover. GO CLIMB A MOUNTAIN...on 2nd thought,
Only in Scotland
Only in Scotland will you find Whisky flavoured condoms! maybe that’s not such a good idea. Went for a wee bit of a hike up Arthurs Seat today and it was defiantly one of the highlights of the trip so far! It was insane getting up there but once I was up there wow the views were just amazing. It felt so good to get the heart pumping for the first time in a month! Nothing like a bit of cardio to kill a hangover. Defiantly made it worth the hike and also helped me sweat out all the alcohol from last night. Only down side was that a bird crapped on my arm and before you have time to think it, no, I didn’t take a picture of it.
Rolled down the hill and hopped in the shower and heard there was a football (soccer for you Canadians) match going on at the Globe around the corner and that’s always a good start to the night. It was a cup final match and within the first 5 minutes of the match one of the goal keepers got a red card. Don’t know what that means? Neither did I and it just so happened that I was standing
Anyone lose a watch?
Funny story behind this but its better told in person... behind 4 ladies that seemed to know what was going on. "Hi, I’m a dumb Canadian, what the heck just happened?" Next thing you know they pretty much explained the whole game and all the different leagues to me. Since I have only met other travellers I asked them where they were from and THEY WERE ACTUALLY LOCALS!! 4 Archaeologists that were working on a dig in Edinburgh. I have met a ton of people in my life but never an Archaeologist before. I learned so much about history that night it was awesome. Woke up the next morning feeling great until I went to look for my watch, uh-oh...where is my watch...and whose watch is this in my pocket? ummmmmmmmmmm....yeah...
Friday May 19th How the heck did I wake up at 730 am this morning? I’m amazed! Heading out on the Haggis 3 day bus tour today and after a quick registration we were all on the bus meeting our two guides for the next 3 days. Ped and Neil. I like to consider myself a bit of a morning person but holy crap did Ped put me to shame. Take the most enthusiastic person you have ever
Ever seen Braveheart?
Statue of Robert the Bruce on the site of the battle of Bannokburn, now this is some history! met, multiply it by a thousand, and add 936 and you are still nowhere close to how enthusiastic this guy was. Quick safety information and we were off on what was promised to be the most amazing 3 days of my life...we shall see. I was right in the front of the bus and found out that there were two girls (the gruesome twosome as they quickly became known) sitting to the left of me from Canada. "So where in Canada are you two from?" "Calgary" came the reply...not again...
Traffic light system? Which are you? Red, yellow, or green? Two hands up for green for me! Don’t know what that means? Don’t ask, inside joke.
...and I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more...
Started off in Sterling with a visit to Bannockburn, the site of the last battle in Braveheart, which I quickly came to find out was a horrible movie...more on that later though. Heard the history of the amazing Robert the Bruce and the first of what turned out to be a seemingly endless amount of Peds props. It was awesome having a guide like this because I was imagining
I MISS THE MOUNTAINS!!
Living in Calgary has severely deprived me of the mountains. some really boring presentations of the history of Scotland that I would just tune out after a minute or two...maybe not! I don’t think history has ever been so entertaining! Can’t help but start laughing...at him or with him...either way you can’t stop laughing.
Back on the bus after a wee wee wee and maybe a jobbie (don’t ask) and we were off to learn about Rob Roy. More props and a goose that looked like it wanted to eat us all alive! Back on the bus to see the bridge that Harry Potter WASNT filmed on...thanks Ped.
Living in Calgary is great but it felt GRRRRRRRRRRRREAT to be back surrounded by mountains again. We made a stop off on the side of the road to see the memorial stone mound dedicated to the last Haggis that was shot on this site...or was it? "Grab a stone and give it the name of someone that broke your heart" I will leave it up to all of you to imagine who that might be ;-)
Back on the bus to Eilean Donan Castle. What castle is that you might ask? Only the one used in the Highlander movies!
This castle look familiar?
For the movie buffs out there this was the castle used for the filming of the Highlander movies :-) It looked amazingly old and I couldn’t wait to find out the incredible history of this castle that was rebuilt in the year...1936? What the heck? The whole thing was rebuilt by the family that owned the land in the 30's at a cost of £250 000. Wow, I want one! Imagine meeting someone at the bar and bringing them back to a castle, now that would be impressive!
Off to the Isle of Skye and our hostel for the night. Seaweed beer, porridge beer, heather beer, is there anything these people won’t make into a beer? The hostel that we were all staying at had a dj setting up so after dinner we all took off to another pub across the road where they had an 80's rock cover band setting up. This could get interesting...and did it ever!! Lynette wore my feet off on the dance floor which wasn’t really that impressive until you find out she was 2 years away from retirement! What an animal, I had the feeling she would be the first person to experience the DEEP SCOTTISH LOVE that we had all been promised. The night ended up with me being the last
Little Mikka you whore
That little guy just LOVES the ladies!! one to leave that pub only to find a crazy rave going on in the hostel that we were staying at. No way am I going to be able to sleep with this going on downstairs so when in Rome...MORE BEER PLEASE!!!
Saturday May 20th I’m not really feeling that bad today but I really could use something to wake me up. Breakfast? Nah! Red Bull? Nah! Irn Bru? Nah! What I really need is to dip my face into a really cold stream. Thanks Ped, I needed that.
Story after story of eyeless women, magical Faeries, giants in diapers...will Ped ever shut up? Would I want him to? Surprisingly no!
Quick little stop for lunch and when was the last time that you got to climb a mountain and have your lunch overlooking a thousand plus foot cliff on one of the only beautiful sunny day that the Isle of Sky will ever see? Sure as heck beats lunch in the Shaw cafeteria I can tell you that!! The lunch could have had quite the tragic end but the dude from LA didn’t plummet to his death much to Peds relief. I guess that guys’ death
Ped you whore!
Looks like the ladies love the tour guide too! These two lovely ladies are the Gruesome Twosome from Calgary of all places! would have made up for Ped killing that poor defenceless sheep...SHEEP KILLER!!!!!
How many people do you think you could fit in a phone booth? Turns out 9 on this trip and somehow we got the door closed. Sorry to hear that some folks became infested with spiders but it’s all in fun!
Back on the bus to my first Scottish kissing gate and Lynette, GRRRRRRRRRRRROWL!!! Remember those stones that I was telling you about? After an interesting story about a dead baby I found out that it I can’t really throw that well. Ended up talking about sex with sheep, how good is it you ask? Apparently according to the sheep I talked to its pretty baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. HAHHAHAAHA Oh yeah out of a group of cows how do you know which one is on vacation? The one with the wee calf...
Off to the Loch Ness to talk to a guy named...
Johan, there's no need to feel down.
I said, Johan, pick yourself off the ground.
I said, Johan, 'cause you're in a new town
There's no need to be unhappy.
I learned out where Campbell’s (insert spit sound here) soup comes from and
Little Mikka...INSATIABLE
Beautiful woman, tasty beer, lovable little moose, does it get any better than this? realized that I really don’t want to piss off an ancient highland Scott.
Back to the hostel for some PASTA FEST!!!!!!!!! Now that we had been fed and watered it was time to go hunt down some NESSIE! I always thought there was only 1 Nessie but it turns out there are 18 in the Loch that they are actively tracking and that if you wanted to hide an animal where nobody would ever find it Loch Ness would be the perfect place. Due to all the peat in the water sunlight doesn’t penetrate further than 10 meters down and since the water is so heavy with the peat and the pressure is so intense the furthest anyone has EVER dove down was a team from the Discovery Channel that went down 130m. The boat itself was equipped with the most sophisticated sonar equipment money could buy and I saw a picture of a sonar reading of one of the creatures. The guy that did the tour gave a quick 5 minute talk about the boat and the loch itself and opened up the floor to questions and that’s where the real information came out. This was a bit
Zoe Zoe Zoe
Zoe my dear you dont need an enchanted stream to make you more beautiful :-) on the odd side but he actually had intelligent answers to any question that was thrown at him and I had a ton to go his way. Neil stop feeding Little Mikka Sheepshagger beer!!
The hour long boat ride flew by and it was back to the hostel, with a quick stop to see a video of a naked man jumping up and down, to catch some £2 double highballs. Break dancing has never been so entertaining and I met some Aussies that put my knowledge of Degrassi Junior High to shame!
Sunday May 22nd I think I’m going to die today. What I need is a good dance by the side of the Loch Ness. Thanks Ped.
Off to Inverness to get some tacky souvenirs and then off to the site of the battle of Culloden. This was where Ped basically explained how everything that we think of as Scottish, kilts, tartans, the clan system, haggis, everything has been made up for the tourists...kind of sad but GREAT to find out!
Off for a quick stop at the Scottish Stonehenge, the Balnuaran of Clava, for a wee bit of hand holding and chanting.
Well
Little Mikka and the rock
Here you see Little Mikka sitting on the rock with the name...now what did I call that rock again... :-) Ill never tell! that was about it for the tour, I haven’t been this physically drained in ages! Would have had a good early night if it wasn’t for me meeting Carmen a girl from Carstairs that serves at the Moxies on Barlow and Mcknight...small world.
Monday May 23rd Well that’s about it for today, off to go find some food, some whisky and maybe even my watch :-) Long story that’s better told in person than over the internet. Hope everyone is doing well! Looks like this website is having some problems right now so it won’t let me upload any pictures. No worries I will just try later! Have fun!
Quick update.
Got back from the Haggis tour and found out that it was the lovely Jenelles bday and holy crap did it ever get insane! After that I ended up staying a little longer than planned. The people there were amazing and for a moment it actually felt like home. It was kinda like the atmosphere from Cheers. I come home after a rough day of touristy crap and the whole common room screams out "GLYN!!" The hostel itself was nice and Edinburgh was a great city but
the people there were just amazing! From my new archiologist friend Amanda to all the great people in Brodies; Jill, the Heathers (Houston we have a problem), Jenelle, Yanna, the Bens, Alex, Ash...the list just goes on and on! Guess I have to leave eventually.
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Jen C.
non-member comment
Is there a stone in Scotland named after me?