journey to Edinburgh

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arighty, so I'm gonna do this in list form:

overnight bus to Edinburgh, kinda rough, Layne had to sit next to this creepy guy who ate whenever he wasn't sleeping. he gave me the willies from the row ahead of me. Kinda slept, not really. Thought I was gonna get some major reading this weekend, didn't at all.

Arrive in Edinburgh at 7:40 in the morning and go shopping which was a bad idea becuase I had to carry around everything I bought from then on. UG!! Went to this AMAZING thrift shop! SO much fun trying on allll sorts of clothes from every era. Got a jacket and a shirt. One of which is totally out of character for me, but I'm gonna branch out a bit 😊. Layne tries on everything in the store and doesn't buy anything, haha. Did most of the stuff Cooks recommends pretty much. That city was really somethin'. I can see why he had such an amazing time. bought a loooooooooot of stuff for people. I got this grrrreat plan for Lindsay and Meg's birthday dinner in our apartment and Emma's gotta be in on it with me cuz I won't be able to keep a straight face the whole time!

decided we were exhuasted, so we make our way to the hostel, which we find out is outside of downstown out by the water, which I LOVED, cuz I love water, any shape or size. I'm an equal opportunist in that way. Hop a free shuttle to the hostel and check in. MY FIRST HOSTEL! with hopefull loooots more to come. Take a nap, wow, haven't slept that hard in a long time. wake up, freshen up, hop the shuttle back into town. the driver is awesome and insanely scottish. I wish I'd gotten a picture of 'im but I didn't bring my camera with me, which I regretted a lot later in the night. I really need a smaller camera. My old hunk o' junk is a P.O.S. get into the city at the top of the Royal Mile and make our way down with a very loose ajenda in mind. pass a really hot guy playing the bagpipes in a kilt... he was accomanied by two black guys jammin' on their drums. It was really cool. Watched for a while. Walked on trying to find a good place to get a beer and some fish and chips. Found a place called Bank Hotel. I don't think it was a hotel, it was really a bar with food. Got a booth, a Strongbow, and a fish and chips. Layne had some idea in her head that we were in scottland, so she wanted whisky, so whisky she got. this was one of the best meals I've had since I got to the UK. WOW, so good and with a Strongbow. Holy garbage man. Anyway, thinking back to when my rents and I were driving around germany and denmark and how my mom bought any glass she liked drinking out of, I go up to the bartender and ask if I can buy the pint glass I was drinking out of. She said "sure, gimma a pound for it". 1 POUND! WAHOOO! so now I have a pint glass that says Strongbow on it 😊 After a long day of shopping for other people, it was awesome to buy something for myself.

Hung out there for a while, then went to look for some music. Found some right around the corner. Got another beer and waited for the entertainment to begin. It was some blues and soul cover band. Pretty good. Then this other cover band came on and let's just say, the first song they played was Pink Floyd. 'nough said.

the night was goin' pretty slow with good music till this blantantly drunk dude comes over and uses the excuse that he has to "put his glass down on the counter between us" to get a convo struck up. this guy is hillarious. he is in love with our American accents and gets us to just talk to him and makes noises of extreme pleasure. When he finds out what we're doing in the UK, he tells us we're smartasses. "All Americans are smartasses, and I mean that in the fuckin' best possible way" were his exact words in his thick Irish accent. He asks us our names, we say Layne and Ashley. He tells us a bit about himself and his cousin who had a great Irish last name, and when she got married, it changed to some word that means a taxi in Irish. A while later he tells us the story again, this time a bit more annimated. "and not like a 'TAAAXIIII!' it's more like a (puts one hand up to his ear like a telephone and dials a number with his other hand on an airphone) 'taxi please'." oh man, we're in hysterics, of course. by this point this Scottish friend of his comes up and starts talking to Layne. So this guy's talking to Layne and the original approacher to me. the orignial guy asks me my name again. After my response, I lean over to Layne and say "I just changed my name to Molly" she breaks from her conversation and replies "I can't understand a word this guy's saying!" My guy decides he wants to introduce me to people, so I follow him and he asks says "Lee, this is... what's your name again?" I say "geez! how many times are you going to forget! It's Christine for the 4th time!" "Lee, this is Christine and I won't forget again." Allen, as I later found out called me Christine for the rest of the night. Talked dirty in Irish to me for a while, or at least I assumed because I couldn't understand a word of it. We had a good conversation during which I looked over to see Layne's guy buying her a shot of something, then later them holding hands, then later him kissing her, so I just tried to stay out of the way. Deciding to go to the bathroom, I go and am immediately followed in by Layne going "we have to get out of here! this guy won't leave me alone!!!" I was hoping she was gonna say that, this guy was lookin' for trouble. So we talked in there for a good long time knowing we'd be safe. Went out listened to some more music and decided to head home.

So we were told we could take the night bus back out to the hostel, so we waited in the freezing cold till the bus came, hopped on not really know where we were supposed to get off. We get off at the last stop and realize we are totally lost in Edinburgh suburbia at 3 in the morning. This one guy who gets of the bus ahead of us asks us if we need directions. We ask him how to get to the Globetrotter hostel, he doesn't really know, but the 3 of us start walking down Marine drive, cuz that's all I remembered and ring up the hostel. The dude pickes up and has to go around to the map cuz he doesn't know we are. Comes back and says to stay on Marine drive and that we'd get there in about 10 minutes. 10 MINUTES! IN THE DARK! ON AN UNLIT STREET NEXT TO A CARAVAN PARK??? riiiiiiiight. Luckily the guy walking with us was cool with escorting us home, we didn't even ask him to, he just decided he was gonna make sure we made it back. So we trotted along to the Globetrotter. 15 minutes later the place comes up around the bend. the only thing keeping us warm is the thought of a bunk bed in a 6 person room. aaahhhhhh. It's time for this dude to turn back so I immediately go over and give him a hug thanking him so much. He's a wee bit shocked, but he deserved it! Now when some chicks get off a bus and ask where this place is, he can just point and say 15 minutes that way! whew! I haven't slept that soundly since... well since we took a nap that afternoon.

next day we wake up and decide we want to get out of the city. So we look through some brocures and most of the tours of places have left already and are really far away, so we checkout and find this one place in St. Andrews, an old castle and cathedral. Look up the time tables and head out there. Now I'm a fan of castles, but not those stuffy, made up, roped off, lounge, eat and sleeping giant places. I LOVED this place. this was a castle from the 15th and 16th century that was mostly gone from some battle. We walked around in there for a long time, right on the sea shore. Green grassy blowing hills, ancient castle echoing the sound of the waves and the seagulls off the walls. How can a dishware and fox hunting paintings in a closed up building with 100322 steps compare with that??? it can't. There was a wicked tunnel that was dug in an effort to collapse some of the castle walls in 1547 and parts of it were still there, so we went down in there and climbed around, got pretty dirty and dripped on, but it was awesome. stayed there for a while, I just climbed one of the remains of a tower and stared out at the sea for so long. People try to capture that sound on recordings, but it's not possible. you're not just hearing the seagulls and the waves, you're hearing the smell, the wind, the foam on the waves. It takes all your senses to hear that sound.

On our way over to the Cathedral, I suddenly remembered why the name St. Andrews sounded so familiar. That's where Mary goes to school! We saw parts of the university there, it was perfect! She had always told me so much about it, it was so perfect that we went there!! The cathedral was like the castle in that only about 10%!w(MISSING)as still there. That's the kind of cathedral I like. Some of the walls are still there, but there's no roof. All cathdrals should be like that. Reading the headstones in the grave yard that had taken over the entire insides of the place was interesting and creepy.

went, got some pizza, bought a book off the street from a used book table set up. Captain Correlli's Mandolin. First book i've bought for pleasure in a looong time.

figured it was time to walk back to the bus, to get the train back to Edinburgh. Realizing we still have 2 hours before our bus, we headed out to find more beer and food. Every place we saw just "wasn't good enough" compared to the place we went friday night. there seemed to be something wrong with every place we stopped! Strangely enough. So we went to the Bank Hotel again and split a fish and chips. MMMMMMMmmmmmmm so good. Got a picture of a monument with a traffic cone on his head. got on the bus, which thankfully only had about 7 people on it this time. that whole sitting next to strange men in the aisle by the toilet thing wasn't too fun. But it was still FRIKIN FREEZING in there!!! We stopped at about 4 am to buy food and use the clean bathrooms and they had camping equiment. We were THIS close to buying a sleeping bag. The whole bus was virtually emtpy, but we still decided to sit next to each other for body heat. It was too cold to sleep, too cold to read, too cold to freakin' think. I had on a t-hirt, my black hoody, a sweater, my sleeping mask, hat, hood up, purple pants, two zip up jackets over zipped around my legs and two layers of socks. with a combination of me not showering for three days and never really being awake or asleep, I must have been a real sight. the though of getting someone to take a picture of me left my head as fast as it entered. We got back to Oxford at 9:30 am and now I'm telling you all about it. I'm so dillegent, aren't I? Really it's cuz I don't want to start my Shakespeare paper. I don't really know what I'm gonna talk about! Arighty, over and out.

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Photos

A Castle
This was right in the middle of town. The parking lot had a stadium built in it for some Medieval Times show.

A street book shop
I found Captain Corelli's Mandolin here. Read a good 3 chapters of it too.

Thrift shop
one of the best thrift shops I've ever been to. I got my stretchy green jacket here.

Bachelorette Party
At a pub that had GREAT fish and chis. So good we went there twice for dinner.

Layne and me
In a pub out where Mary goes to University

Another older castle
This was a place where you had to hear the smell of the ocean, feel the waves in your ears and taste the sun.