On the 4th day of our trip, we took the train from Glasgow to Edinburgh with Tom to meet up with Blake’s other “English guy studying in Glasgow who also studied at Lund” friend, Derek (a fellow Ginger as well). When we got to Edinburgh our plan was to drop our bags off at our hostel, then get some sight-seeing in before Derek got into town. After we walked all the way from the train station to the hostel though, we discovered that there was no safe place to leave our bags. Not that we had anything valuable, but they just suggested leaving our bags sitting out in the lobby all day. Since everything I would need for the next 2 weeks was in that bag, I didn’t really want to risk it. So we walked all the way back to the train station looking for a storage locker. All they had to offer though was a service that charged 7£ per bag! Per bag! What a rip-off. We are cheap, so we walked even further to the bus station, where we at least found a locker for 4£ that we could put both of our bags in. So that was good, but by the time this fiasco was all settled, we had wasted well over an hour, and we only had half of a day to being with in Edinburgh. But by then, Derek was there, so we met up with him and we were ready to begin touring the city.
So we started walking and it started raining. We popped into a pub to grab a beer and wait out what seemed like a short burst of heavy rain.
The rain did go away and we made our way towards Edinburgh Castle.
On our way we even saw a fox in the middle of the city! Blake and I were shocked, but Tom and Derek said it wasn’t really a big deal.
The Castle cost quite a bit of money, so we just saw the outside, snapped a photo of all of us there, and called it good. Actually we had to get 2 photos taken, since the first random stranger apparently thought it was more important to get all of our feet in the picture instead of the Castle.
(Side Note: Why can only about 15% of the population take a decent picture? It isn’t that hard people! If we are in front of a landmark and ask you to take our picture, wouldn’t you assume that we would want the landmark to be in it?! When people ask me to take their picture, I do my absolute best to give them a picture to remember, but apparently I am just more courteous than most people. Or smarter. Who knows?)
After the boys got their picture with a dragon, we just walked down the Royal Mile, which was really cute, but unfortunately we had no idea what we were looking at. Blake and I made the mistake of assuming that Tom and Derek might be good tour guides since they had both been to Edinburgh before. Don’t get me wrong- it was a ton of fun to hang out with Tom and Derek, but tour guides they are not (no offense guys, really!).
At the end of Royal Mile we were all trying to decide what to do, and Blake mentioned taking the hike up to Arthur’s Seat. At the time of this decision, the rain had subsided, and this activity was free, so we set off for the hike. It wasn’t a hard hike at all, but then, it started to rain. We were already half-way up so we decided to keep on, keepin’ on, even though none of us were remotely prepared for the weather. The rain luckily stopped while we were at the top. It had a great view, but the monument was a little underwhelming to say the least.
After we “bagged” that hill (that’s what the Scot’s say when they make it to a peak), we started to make our decent and our 25 minute walk back to the city when the heavens just opened up. Luckily we weren’t at the summit when the thunderstorm started, but it was down-pouring. It was absolutely miserable, and like I said, none of us were prepared. When we finally found a little but of shelter, I took this video to capture the atmosphere:
We were pretty much done with Edinburgh after this, since we were all freezing cold and soaking wet. So we just grabbed some dinner, and Tom and Derek went back to their homes, and Blake and I went to bed in our 10-bed hostel dorm room since we had to catch a very early flight the next day.
To check out all the Edinburgh pictures (there aren’t that many, I promise), click here!
(Editor's Update: I just re-read this post and it maybe sounds perhaps a little negative, but we loved Edinburgh! The bad weather and the not knowing stuff turned out to be pretty comical actually. Plus Tom and Derek are hilarious, which made everything funny.)
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