Holy cow, have 6 days gone by already?! Nuts. I guess that means that I should review our time in Scotland before I inevitably forget and become too lazy to do it! In light of that tendency, I've decided to do ONE blog post per country at minimum, possibly more if we've done something particularly exciting.
To be concise, Scotland was a dream and almost just as I remembered it. Though it started off FREEZING (why did we only bring one pair of pants and NO big sweaters?), it turned out to be THE BEST introduction to our European excursion.
Touring the more rural parts of Scotland with Rory was, as I expected, fantastic and relaxing. We had no schedule and nothing to do for the first day and a half, so we spent the day just going with the flow. We saw a bit of Glasgow after leaving the airport, had a nap back at the farm, then wandered around the farm property with Rory, which was quite a trek, but it was great to see the landscape in the countryside! Our first night in Scotland in the bungalow at Rory's was the best sleep we have had yet! We were curled up on the pull-out sofa bed under a bunch of blankets to keep out the cold and had the furnace going to give us some extra warmth. We fell asleep watching Identity Thief on Netflix. The next day, we slept in and got up around 11. Another wander around the farm in the now-present sunlight and we were off to Perth to catch the train to Edinburgh at 5:20, taking the scenic route as we went along. We stopped at the Rumbling Bridge and went down an obviously less-taken path down to the small rapids of the river and climbed up on the rocks to get a good view. Later downstream, the river turned into a roaring monster, careening off of cliffs to form some pretty impressive waterfalls.
The train to Edinburgh was...interesting. We didn't get seats so we ended up standing for the hour and a bit it took to get from Perth to Edinburgh, but that wasn't too bad. I was more confused about the seating, whether or not all the seats were reserved because they all seemed to have "Reserved" signed on them! I've heard that Europeans are particular about their train seating, so I was nervous and didn't want to sit in someone's seat and die of embarrassment when I got kicked out. I later realized that the signs also read the location where each seat was reserved until, so for example, "Perth to Edinburgh" meant that it was ONLY reserved between those stops, any seats with station stops that had already passed were free! Seems straight-forward, but hindsight is always 20-20. Once we arrived at our stop (Haymarket station), getting to the hostel was surprisingly easy! It was about a 5 minute walk and it turned out to be very close to where I stayed for a night when I was in the city three years ago, imagine that!
Our hostel was pretty much perfect. Our room had 12 beds, but was never full. The best times to shower were in the afternoon or evening because everyone likes to shower in the morning and people are usually out in the afternoons. I'm a night-showerer myself, and since we always seemed to be getting up super early, we got out and covered some ground while everyone was still sleeping and came back to nap and shower while they were gone. It was only £2 to wash and dry our clothes. And it was perfectly located - just far enough from the main parts of town so that it was quiet, but close enough that we could walk to the Old Town in about 20 minutes effortlessly. We walked EVERYWHERE in Edinburgh, until our feet throbbed from constant contact with the cobblestone streets of the Royal Mile, which I'm pretty sure we walked at least 6 or 8 times in the 5 days we were there. We took the bus only twice: once to get to Holyrood Park to hike Arthur's Seat, and once to get us and all of our stuff to Waverley station to catch a train to London.
I wish I could write about everything I loved in Edinburgh, but let's just say that I think it's a FANTASTIC city, possibly one of my favourites in Europe. I am so happy to have been able to come back and done everything that I wished I had done last time, but didn't have the time. I loved touring the Castle again and was just as fascinated, but I am over the moon about hiking up Arthur's Seat with Meg and to have seen the gorgeous views from its peak. I guess I could say that I got to see Edinburgh in a whole new way, and that's something in itself.
Maybe once we get back I'll do a "Top 5 things" we did in each city or country, but I don't think I have the energy to do it right now. Blogging while abroad is something that I always want to do and keep up with, but I'm so notoriously bad at it that it hurts. It probably doesn't help that the wifi isn't the greatest over here (us North Americans and our freakishly fast internet), but I can't really blame my ineptitude on a technicality.
Anywho, that's all for now! Currently in London squished into my bunk with Meg while we figure out what the hell we're doing tomorrow. Such fun.
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