Weekend in Edinburgh
Hello all,
It's been a while since I updated this thing, so here goes.
The weekend in Edinburgh was fantastic, I love that city. (Sue you said I would) We arrived in Edinburgh around noonish, and made our way to our Hostel. Now, we all know Hostels are cheap and crap, but this was kind of the king of a crappy Hostel. When we find it, in a dark alley, we have to climb 70 steps to reach the 'reception' desk. Now the receptionist was a chick around our age, and was a crazy hippy. But she seemed cool, just not your typical receptionist. So we go to our room, room H, and find that we are in a room along with 8 men. Guys in the 35-40 age range, weird. And they had been living there for weeks, equally as weird. But they were all quite nice.
Then we find a quick lunch, and wander the city. We go to the Scottish Parliament building, The City of Edinburgh museum, John Knox's house and church, wander the Royal Mile. It was a beautiful day, clear and sunny and fairly warm. Perfect for walking around. We got tired and people watched for a while, on the steps of a Cathedral in the heart of Edinburgh. I swear we saw like 5 little blonde girls with their parents, and they were all wearing pink. It was funky. There was this one girl, blonde/pink, and she was being completely ignored by her family and kept asking for her hot chocolate over and over, it was really funny. (Maybe not so much to you) Moving on, we then made our way to dinner on the Royal Mile, delicious. Earlier in the day we had seen a sign for live traditional music at a pub called Tass, so we went there. The music was fantastic. We met some interesting people, mainly this group of old men, who thought we were locals. They were there for one of their sons bachelor weekends, and they were having a great time. It was quite amusing.
Saturday morning we were out and about fairly early. We had booked a tour the day before for the tour of Mary King's close. It was fantastic. For those of you who don't know, Close's (pronouced as close, as in come closer) were tiny alley way's between rows and rows of houses, usually before the city was planned out. So at some point they city decided to build a large town hall type building, and to do that they would need to pave over these closes and throw everyone who lived there out. To give you an idea a couple hundred people lived in each close, so it was quite a big deal. Anyway, when they did this there were a few close's that survived,
Mary King's was one of them. It was really neat, everyone was dressed in costumes appropriate for the time. We went down a couple levels and he led us around them. We were in rooms wher people died of the plague, where the really poor of the time lived, in an underground barn where they kept herds of cows, etc. One room we couldn't go in because at the time they used Arsenic in the wallpaper paste. The way our guide put it, "Should one of you fall and happen to lick the wall, then we would be in trouble." It was funny. It was really creepy in some places too, five foot ceilings, plaster made with horses hair and human ashes, just weird stuff like that. But the tour was so neat, definitely worth it.
After that came a fairly fatal blow. We got lunch wandered around some more, and then went to Dorothy and Missy's (my aunt's) hotel to meet them at 2. We get there and the receptionist explains they've been delayed and won't arrive until noon Sunday! How terrible for them, ends up they missed their connection, no fault of their own, but a bummer. So naturally the way Jen and I cope with something of this nature, we search the city for its finest chocolate. I wish I could say I were kidding, we went to a dozen or so coffee shops, restaurants, bars, looking for the perfect chocolate cake. We had strict criteria, nice cake consistency, sweet chocolate frosting, warm, with ice cream. We did find it, at a place called The Filling Station. We decided to get dinner too.
That night we went to a different pub on the Royal Mile, it said it'd be having live music. The music ended up being terrible, it involved a man, a guitar, and a beat box. Not good. So we wandered back to Tass where they had a live band, good stuff. The place was so cool.
Sunday, Jen and I wander around the city some more, go to see Calton Hill, a huge hill that takes about 20 minutes to climb, where from the top you can see the greatest view of the city. Fantastic. Took lots of pictures. Then we went to Miss and Dora's hotel again. Thankfully they had arrived safely. The four of us went to lunch, on Aggie which was sweet of her, enjoyed a nice meal at The Mitre. We all walked around a bit, before later afternoon when Jen and I caught the train back to St. Andrews. A successful weekend overall.
Monday and Tuesday have been busy of this week. Lots of work to prepare for my tutorials. Today Missy and Dorothy arrived in St. Andrews to visit. We walked down to the sea, and walked around the town, unfortunately in the rain. Then we had tea in a shop I'm partial to, wandered some more. We're waiting to do the neat ruins stuff for tomorrow, it's not supposed to pour all day. Then we went to Pride and Prejudice at the cinema, it was quite good, but we all know that's because I'm a sap, and as Missy pointed out I have no taste. She's right, I loved it. And it was probably terrible, no I know some parts of it were ridiculous especially having read the book, but you know how I am with bonnet documentaries!? After that we went out to dinner at Papa Joe's and then headed home. And here I am!
I hope all is well with everyone in the States. Keep in touch, I check my email often. Miss you all.
Love,
Cate
It's been a while since I updated this thing, so here goes.
The weekend in Edinburgh was fantastic, I love that city. (Sue you said I would) We arrived in Edinburgh around noonish, and made our way to our Hostel. Now, we all know Hostels are cheap and crap, but this was kind of the king of a crappy Hostel. When we find it, in a dark alley, we have to climb 70 steps to reach the 'reception' desk. Now the receptionist was a chick around our age, and was a crazy hippy. But she seemed cool, just not your typical receptionist. So we go to our room, room H, and find that we are in a room along with 8 men. Guys in the 35-40 age range, weird. And they had been living there for weeks, equally as weird. But they were all quite nice.
Then we find a quick lunch, and wander the city. We go to the Scottish Parliament building, The City of Edinburgh museum, John Knox's house and church, wander the Royal Mile. It was a beautiful day, clear and sunny and fairly warm. Perfect for walking around. We got tired and people watched for a while, on the steps of a Cathedral in the heart of Edinburgh. I swear we saw like 5 little blonde girls with their parents, and they were all wearing pink. It was funky. There was this one girl, blonde/pink, and she was being completely ignored by her family and kept asking for her hot chocolate over and over, it was really funny. (Maybe not so much to you) Moving on, we then made our way to dinner on the Royal Mile, delicious. Earlier in the day we had seen a sign for live traditional music at a pub called Tass, so we went there. The music was fantastic. We met some interesting people, mainly this group of old men, who thought we were locals. They were there for one of their sons bachelor weekends, and they were having a great time. It was quite amusing.
Saturday morning we were out and about fairly early. We had booked a tour the day before for the tour of Mary King's close. It was fantastic. For those of you who don't know, Close's (pronouced as close, as in come closer) were tiny alley way's between rows and rows of houses, usually before the city was planned out. So at some point they city decided to build a large town hall type building, and to do that they would need to pave over these closes and throw everyone who lived there out. To give you an idea a couple hundred people lived in each close, so it was quite a big deal. Anyway, when they did this there were a few close's that survived,
Mary King's was one of them. It was really neat, everyone was dressed in costumes appropriate for the time. We went down a couple levels and he led us around them. We were in rooms wher people died of the plague, where the really poor of the time lived, in an underground barn where they kept herds of cows, etc. One room we couldn't go in because at the time they used Arsenic in the wallpaper paste. The way our guide put it, "Should one of you fall and happen to lick the wall, then we would be in trouble." It was funny. It was really creepy in some places too, five foot ceilings, plaster made with horses hair and human ashes, just weird stuff like that. But the tour was so neat, definitely worth it.
After that came a fairly fatal blow. We got lunch wandered around some more, and then went to Dorothy and Missy's (my aunt's) hotel to meet them at 2. We get there and the receptionist explains they've been delayed and won't arrive until noon Sunday! How terrible for them, ends up they missed their connection, no fault of their own, but a bummer. So naturally the way Jen and I cope with something of this nature, we search the city for its finest chocolate. I wish I could say I were kidding, we went to a dozen or so coffee shops, restaurants, bars, looking for the perfect chocolate cake. We had strict criteria, nice cake consistency, sweet chocolate frosting, warm, with ice cream. We did find it, at a place called The Filling Station. We decided to get dinner too.
That night we went to a different pub on the Royal Mile, it said it'd be having live music. The music ended up being terrible, it involved a man, a guitar, and a beat box. Not good. So we wandered back to Tass where they had a live band, good stuff. The place was so cool.
Sunday, Jen and I wander around the city some more, go to see Calton Hill, a huge hill that takes about 20 minutes to climb, where from the top you can see the greatest view of the city. Fantastic. Took lots of pictures. Then we went to Miss and Dora's hotel again. Thankfully they had arrived safely. The four of us went to lunch, on Aggie which was sweet of her, enjoyed a nice meal at The Mitre. We all walked around a bit, before later afternoon when Jen and I caught the train back to St. Andrews. A successful weekend overall.
Monday and Tuesday have been busy of this week. Lots of work to prepare for my tutorials. Today Missy and Dorothy arrived in St. Andrews to visit. We walked down to the sea, and walked around the town, unfortunately in the rain. Then we had tea in a shop I'm partial to, wandered some more. We're waiting to do the neat ruins stuff for tomorrow, it's not supposed to pour all day. Then we went to Pride and Prejudice at the cinema, it was quite good, but we all know that's because I'm a sap, and as Missy pointed out I have no taste. She's right, I loved it. And it was probably terrible, no I know some parts of it were ridiculous especially having read the book, but you know how I am with bonnet documentaries!? After that we went out to dinner at Papa Joe's and then headed home. And here I am!
I hope all is well with everyone in the States. Keep in touch, I check my email often. Miss you all.
Love,
Cate