Edinburgh 2

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This was the third time that I had been to Edinburgh, and miraculously, I still saw places that I had never seen before.

There were 9 Americans, including myself, who went on this trip. I'll use names instead of saying "girl" or "boy", so our names were Erin, Megan, Kacie, Michele, Melissa, Alex, Nick, Adrienne and Kaylee. We took a train out of Ormskirk at cpm on Friday night. We trained into Liverpool, then Liverpool to Wigan, then Wigan to Edinburgh. We arrived in Edinburgh around 10:30 and made our way over to Castle Rock Hostel, just off the Royal Mile near the castle.

This was my first actual time staying in a hostel with people I did not know, so I will definitely explain about that experience. Hostels, for those who do not know, are very very VERY cheap places to stay when you are traveling. I paid 13 pounds per night, which is roughly $20. Mostly the people who stay in hostels are young, but some are older and creepy... and some are older and not creepy, too. The rooms will be divided into mixed gender, male or female. There are anywhere from 4-20 or more people staying in the rooms, and you generally do not know most of them. They split our large group up, so I ended up being the only person that I knew in my 14 person all girls dorm. This alone is freaky in itself. They give you lockers for your things, but I slept with my wallet up my shirt in front of me and slept on it with my arms crossed over it. This is probably unnecessary, since everyone in the hostel is in the same situation as you are, but it would ruin the trip to lose everything, so I took the precautions. The bathrooms were also mixed gender. If you value privacy, do not stay in a hostel. It took me awhile to get used to, but overall I would recommend it. You save money and can spend it on seeing the sights and its a good chance to meet people with common rooms and cheap breakfast. Also, if you are afraid of germs, do not stay in a hostel. All of the dishes are shared and you are responsible for cleaning them... Anyway, just take care in choosing a good hostel.

After we got settled into our hostel, we all made our way down the Royal Mile to a pub called the Filling Station. From there, five of us decided to out to a few more places and the bartender recommended for us to go to the New Town, another part of the city in walking distance. We had Nick with us the entire time, which made me feel better, except that he speaks in a fake English accent when he drinks and it's pretty obvious and funny, but embarrassing when he asks people for directions. Anyway, he was a very large guy that we used for protection. I'm not sure if I should tell this story, because I do not want people to worry about me while I'm here, but seeing as I lived through it, I think it will be ok and we all learned from our mistakes. Just skip this paragraph if you don't want to hear about my sketchiness. We basically got lost trying to find the area described, and Nick was already drinking. Next thing I know, he is going up to a bum with a rottweiler to ask for directions. The bum then scoops up his sleeping bag into a backpack and decides to lead us to the spot......... WTF. Nick was walking next to him and in the background the girls are freaking out, trying to decide what to do. We can't leave Nick, considering he is our protection, but we're all pretty sure that the bum is leading us to some alley where all of his bum friends will rob us and rape us. We followed the bum, who led us through brightly lit and crowded streets, and I promise you that if he had led us anywhere away from people we would not have followed him. I just can't believe my life sometimes. Fortunately, the bum led us in the right direction and we made our way into a Mexican themed club where we were safe.

Nick and Alex made their way over to the bar and Megan, Michele and I saved a table. Next thing I know, some guy had his face in my face asking me my name. He and his friends decided that three girls meant "Please, come talk to us". I told the guy that I did not speak English, and then realized that he might be Spanish and see through my terribly broken Spanish, so I gave in and we said we were American. Megan left to go hide with Nick, and Michele started leaving, so I followed them over, despite the creepers ordering me to stay and sit with them. Who does that? Anyway, the rest of the night was incredibly safe and we made it back to our hostel and passed out.

The next day, we all went out to breakfast and then up to the castle. We all split up within the castle and I ended up sticking around with Megan and Kacie. We walked through the castle in about 2-3 hours and decided we wanted to venture elsewhere. I had decided that I wanted to go up to Calton Hill, which has many monuments and overlooks the city. We made our way down the Royal Mile and over towards the Hill. As we were approaching the Hill, we passed an interesting-looking old cemetery. We paused at the gates to awkwardly decide if we wanted to go in, and decided to proceed. We were then surrounded by a basically abandoned cemetery with graves from the 1800's or earlier. We found a giant memorial to David Hume, which might have even been where he was buried. As we went further in the graveyard, we began noticing that there were fewer people and more and more places that looked like living spaces of homeless people. We turned tail after noticing this and made our way, quickly, out of the cemetery. It was definitely a really cool place to be, but we could tell it was not kept up and figured we did not want to get hurt if someone did show up. We made our way up to Calton Hill and got an amazing view of the city. We stayed at the top for awhile and made our way down to eat dinner. This was the most wonderful dinner considering I had been living on cafeteria food and takeaway for the past month. I miss my food at home! We met up with the exhausted others at the hostel and decided that we were going to do a ghost tour of Greyfriar's Cemetery. I had done this four years ago with my school group, so I found myself more excited than scared and I consoled the others. Four years ago, I was terrified of this tour. I feel like I have grown a lot recently and I do not get scared as easily. However, put me in that cemetery by myself and I will not last long. Safety in numbers, I guess. After the tour, we went back and passed out from our exhausting day.

On Sunday, we all split up in different directions to take care of our different agendas. Megan and I made our way over to The Palace of Holyroodhouse, which is the official residence of the Queen when she stays in Edinburgh. I went here four years ago with school, but did not really remember it. The palace was incredible. There were many historic objects there and most of the rooms are used by the Queen when she comes, aside from the bedrooms with historic and ornately decorated furniture from many centuries ago. There is not really a way to describe all of the incredible objects that they had, so I would definitely recommend this on a visit. The palace is also connected with old ruins of an abbey. We paid extra to go into the Queen's gallery, which consisted only of two room with pictures of Antarctica and was not worth it. The pictures were old and amazingly clear, but not worth 3 pound 50, or about $6. After Holyrood, we met up with the others to climb the dormant volcano that makes up the high point of Edinburgh, called Arthur's Seat. I was the only one from a region that was relatively hilly, so we took our time to make sure that we made it up safely. It only took 45 minutes to climb, but was a decently exhausting trip. I would definitely call it a hill at best, but the others referred to it as Mt. Everest. We made our way up to the top for a breathtaking, yet windy view. This was an incredible journey and I would recommend it to anyone, even inexperienced hikers. We came down, had lunch, and decided that we wanted to go back early because we were too exhausted to do anything else. Three trains and five and a half hours later, we made it back to Ormskirk, where I do not have to sleep with other people I don't know watching me. Relieved and exhausted, we retired early from a great trip to Edinburgh.

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