Day 12: Travel to Scotland

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Day 12: Travel to Scotland: 6th day of study tour

Yet again another early morning. We met for breakfast and made sure everyone was ready before taking the bus to the train station. Once there we waited for our train. We got on the train and I fell alseep for until an announcement came on that said there was complimentary WiFi! Really! I was so excited I woke up and got out my computer. That's when I uploaded the text from the Paris trip. I couldn't do photos for some reason, I'm not sure if it was the connection- but I tired uploading photos on the travel blog, snapfish, kodak, photo bucket and nothing would work. It was the first time I had internet access since I left the States. Another very BIG difference between the US and the UK- in the US you can get WiFi almost anywhere. There- you have to pay a pound a minute... too much for me! Anyways... so the train was good and we arrived in Scotland after 4 1/2 hours or so. We got off the train and were met by a tour guide who took us to the University of Edinburgh to check in. And we had space! The dorms were very nice, clean, spacious and we were all togther which made it easy to find everyone. We dropped off our stuff and met our guide for the walking tour. This guide was really friendly and funny! The tour was detailed and we went through a lot of graveyards and learned about how a lot of areas in Edinburgh are so high because there are just piles and plies of bodies from the plague. Edinburgh is a beautiful city. The roads are uilt on top of each other and you walk up a hill and all of a sudden you are on a bridge looking down at the road you just came from and oh!The Edinburgh Castle... how beautiful. We never made it in it. I would have really like to at least walk up to it, but it just never happened. We took plenty of picutres from below of it. The tour took us all around the city and it was good for us all just to get our bearings. It gets easier I think, going to a new place and finding your way around. London was definetly the most difficult to figure out where you were and where you wanted to be. I think after our 5th day there I finally knew where I was. Edinburgh was much easier- smaller, but you could always figure out where you were from where the castle was. After the tour we had dinner and this restuarant- some people liked it... picky me... didn't fancy it! After that students had free time. It was getting late so we told them they had to see one show of their choice before the night was over. The festival had hundreds of shows and they are at all times of the day. We split up into smaller groups based upon what we wanted to see. Me, Adam, Steph, Anthony, Tommy, Ilyse, Lizzie, Lindsay, and David went to see a one man comdy show called Full Koller. It was described as Mr. Bean on acid so we thought we'd give it a shot. What a great show to start off the festival... it was hilarious. He had all different sketches- one included a clothing rack with a shower curtain and the song People by Barabara and it was fabulous. Adam was up on stage and ended up getting a free t-shirt! For the finale he had muitliple water bottles and spray bottles and he became a human fountain. It was a fantastic start to Edinburgh.

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