Kilts & Cashmere in Scotland

Well, I should probably get to updating this before I leave for my next weekend trip.  I meant to update it on Sunday night, but time just flies by here and it didn’t get done.  So, let me tell you about my trip to Scotland.

First of all, it was absolutely gorgeous!  A group of 12 of us left early Friday morning for the train station.  The train was interesting because some of us had assigned seats and some didn’t.  We weren’t quite sure what to do because some people were sitting in our assigned seats, so we just grabbed a group of empty seats.  After a few stops a bunch of us had been kicked out of our seats, so we ended up having to ask the people in our assigned seats to move.  The train ride there was about 3 hours long – not too bad, most of us just tried to sleep the whole way.  Once we got there, we set off to find our hostel.  About a ten minute walk and lots of stairs later, we made it to the Art Roch Hostel.  We were told that we couldn’t check in until 2:00 PM so we put our luggage in their storage room and took off for a couple hours to explore.  We got some food in a local pub and walked part of the Royal Mile.

When we were able to check into the hotel at 2 we headed up two flights of stairs to our 18 bunk bed room.  We put our stuff down and some people took naps while I went out with some friends to explore a little more.  We went to a small supermarket and got 3 bottles of wine for 10 pounds (hey we’re cheap college students).  For dinner, we headed to a local Mexican restaurant which had amazing food.  We ordered some margaritas and just relaxed after a long day of traveling.  The 12 of us racked up a pretty expensive bill and decided that we were going to make our own dinner in the hostel kitchen the next night.  Then we headed back to the hostel to get ready to go out for the night.  We went to the same pub that we had lunch in earlier.  There were a lot of men in kilts who attempted to teach us some Scottish dances to the music they were playing, it was pretty interesting.  Then we headed to a club down the street where they had karaoke, we put in a request but ended up leaving before they called our name. 

The next morning we got up and decided to climb a dormant volcano called Arthur’s Seat.  A couple of the girls were in flip flops, but all of us made it to the top in a little over an hour.  It was pretty windy but the views were amazing, the pictures hardly do it justice.  You could see for miles in every direction including the ocean.  We sat on the top of the hill for about 45 minutes just soaking it all in and holding on to the rock so we didn’t blow away.  On the way back down we took a different route and found a pond full of swans and ducks; which we were able to feed bread crumbs for a while. 

After making it down to the bottom of the mountain, we headed to the grocery store to buy spaghetti ingredients for our home made dinner.  We stayed in this amazing hostel that had a “chill” room with a large kitchen that we were able to use.  The six boys that we were with decided to make dinner for all the girls – which was a nice treat.  The food was amazing, and better yet only cost us 3 pounds per person.  We continued to hang out in the chill room after dinner and had a couple drinks before we went out for the night.  The workers of the hostel led a pub crawl to three different pubs around Edinburgh. 

The next morning we had to get up early and check out by 10:00 AM.  We put our luggage in the storage room again and set out to find some breakfast.  After breakfast we went to a whiskey distillery tour which was pretty interesting.  At the end we were able to try a dram of whiskey, which for some of us didn’t go down so well.  After the tour we decided to split up into smaller groups.  Candace, Veronica and I decided what better to do than to shop!  We walked all over and pretty much spent the whole day shopping and people watching (there are some interesting characters in Edinburgh).  With about an hour to go before our train left we all met back at the hostel and headed to the train station together.  The train ride home took about 4 hours because they were doing some maintenance on the tracks.  With about 30 minutes left to Grantham, a bunch of drunken 40 year old men came on and were pretty entertaining.  They were singing songs and talking to us about America.  We got so distracted we almost missed our stop at Grantham, but we all made it back to the manor by 11:00 PM.

We took a British Studies field trip yesterday to Lincoln.  It was neat to see the buildings and locations of everything we are currently learning about in our history class.  The best part about the field trip was that I was able to light a candle at the cathedral for my uncle who passed away earlier this week.  The funeral is today, so my family is definitely on my mind on such a tough day.  

We leave for Germany tonight for the opening weekend of Oktoberfest in Munich.  I'll try to update this again on Sunday, but we all know how that goes. Until next time, love you all.