So my new favourite place in the world is Edinburgh and it's now my plan that after I retire from a long career of nursing to move there, buy a golden retriever dog and spend my days enjoying how unbelievably gorgeous that city and surrounding area is.
We arrived via high speed train from Kings Cross Station (we were on platform 7 :( no Harry Potter for us)... It was cool. Kiri kept saying that she felt like she was on a hunger games train... I could agree. It was sweet. Anyways, the moment we came up out of the train station on Prince's Street, we were greeted by a guy dressed in a kilt and playing bagpipes. I could've died happy right then and there... It was incredible. We marvelled at how beautiful Edinburgh is all the way to our hostel, which happened to be a converted church from the 1800s. It was very loud as echoey but really cool!
The firs thing we did was stop for lunch in a little cafe before heading back to Prince's Street to lay in a park for awhile because the sun was out and we were tired from waking up at 5am... Kiri made a flower crown and napped. It was very relaxing.
We wandered around an art gallery that was free for about 20 mins before heading to the Scott Monument. For anyone who is like me and had never heard of it before, picture a tall church steeple sitting on the ground, without a church. It was basically a really tall tower that gave us some incredibly views of Edinburgh and area... You had to climb 287 stairs up a very narrow and steep spiral staircase to get to the top... I'm only 5"7 and I had to duck my head to get through the tight spots! If you're claustrophobic, this is not the monument for you! The views from the top were absolutely breathtaking... It was at that point that I started formulating my life plan of living there with a dog one day.
The rest of the evening was spent doing laundry because it is freaking hard to keep your clothes clean when you've been gone for a month and Kiri and I have been procrastinating washing our clothes again.
The next day, we slept in until 11am!! Apparently we were tired! We got our butts in gear and wandered around town for awhile, waiting for a walking tour of the city to start. We had brunch in the park and enjoyed the sunshine while it lasted-about 5 minutes after the walking tour started, the skies opened up and started pouring. Typical Albertans, we hadn't brought out our rain gear so we ducked out of our tour and headed back to the hostel for a late lunch and our rain jackets that we've been carrying since Africa and haven't actually used. With our jackets on, we spent the rest of the afternoon getting SOAKED to the bone wandering around the city.
We returned back to the hostel for dinner, where we popped a pizza in the oven for dinner... It's nice having a kitchen! I'm getting really tired of having to eat out every day! But anyways, while we were making food, we made friends with a couple other guys in the hostel, and within a few hours we were hanging out in a pub in Edinburgh... It was pretty sweet. There was a bit of live music again which I absolutely loved... The guy played a lot of Johnny Cash.
We hit a few local establishments in Edinburgh that night before making our way back to our hostel around 3am. We slept for a few hours and then got up and put on our brightest, whitest t shirts to do Colour Me Rad!! For those who've never heard of it before, it's basically a 5km run where you get blasted by coloured cornstarch. Funds made goes towards a charity; this one benefited Make a Wish Foundation UK. None of us really ate breakfast before the run and we were all pretty sleep deprived from the night before but that don't stop us from having a GREAT time! It was one of my favourite things we've done so far on this trip.
After getting coloured, we hit up a pub for some lunch before heading back to the hostel to shower off. Kiri and I had fully intended to take a nap and repack our bags because we were leaving the next day and my bed looked like a bomb had exploded on it. BUT some of our new friends at the hostel convinced us to go and check out a free music festival happening in a park and am I ever glad we obliged. It was another one of my favourites... Lots of music, street vendors, people, dogs... At one point we gathered around a tent to watch a cardboard battle... about 15 kids spent the day building "armour" out of scrap cardboard and then it was time for them to "battle." They basically just ran around, beating each other with cardboard swords to determine who would be the victor... Entertainment in Scotland is hilarious.
That evening we basically hung around the hostel, getting things in order for our early train to inverness.... I'm getting a little tired of getting up at 5am to move to the next country, but it was well worth it!