Scotland: Ends (Saturday)

I was awakened by the Chinese Contingent in our room talking and I thought, "they are going to open up the blinds very soon". Not even 30 seconds later the blinds were pulled open. I hate it when I'm right. Our first destination of the day was the top of Salisbury Crags. Before we did that, we checked out of the hostel and left our luggage in another room again.

We walked down the Royal Mile (picture 1) which starts at Edinburgh Castle and ends at Holyrood Park. Salisbury Crags are some cliffs that kind of rise out of the ground right next to Arthur's Seat. The walk up was pretty uneventful. Beautiful sunshine, winds, great views, stuff I should never get jaded about (picture 2). At the top of the Crags (pictures 3), we met some girls from Texas. As is the custom when meeting people at the top of anything, they took our picture (picture 4) and we took theirs. Next we walked to Portobello (picture 5), the suburb to the northeast. Portobello was really popular as a little village on the North Sea with a huge beach in the 50's. On the way, at the base of Arthur's Seat, was a pond with a ton of birds. Some people were feeding them bread. As I said, Portobello has a beach but the crowds of the past were not there, at least not on a Saturday morning at 11. We walked along the beach for a really long time west, making our way to Leith. While we were walking, a dog ran up to Vanessa who proceeded to pet it. After it ran away she said, "That alone was worth the walk up here". Haha. The beach ended and we ate our lunch high up on a hill overlooking Portobello and the beach (picture 6 has our vie while we ate lunch). Very pretty with the morning sun but not as nice as St. A's. The next part of our journey was not as good. We followed a path along the sea but the path ended in an industrial area (picture 7). We walked around for a while continuing our direction west. Eventually, we made it out to a main road but not before passing by some putrid smelling landfills. Yuck!

At Leith, we walked through the newly built lofts and flats (just like Mill City in Mpls and Chelsea Harbor in London). We went to Ocean Terminal which ended up being a mall (picture 8). It was odd walking around in a place that easily could have been in California or even Minnesota. Lots of people here walking around and shopping. Vanessa bought a necklace. I bought a fruit smoothie which had pineapple, strawberries, oranges, and bananas in it. AMAZING!! It was nice to have something other than my diet of the trip of bagels, pasta with sauce, PBJ, and water. I didn't really mind having all that stuff, it was just nice to have something else. Anyway, we perused the mall some more and then decided it was time to go back. I had not realized how far down we were. The entire walk back to our hostel was uphill. Granted it wasn't very steep but still. Walking uphill for two and a half miles straight is not that awesome. Especially when you have been walking and standing everyday for three days straight. One the way up, in Leith, I looked up the road and all I saw was Arthur's Seat framed by buildings (picture 9). It reminded me of the mountain towns in Colorado and Montana with the exception of people driving on the wrong side of the road. So we walked back up to the Royal Mile. Earlier Vanessa had said that she wanted to go to some of the free museums on it. The museums were further down the hill so we went down and into some of them. We reached the end of the Mile and I said, well, I guess we have to head back up now. Vanessa said, "What?!?! I thought we were going back to the hostel?" I told her I thought she wanted to go the museums so that's where I led us. Miscommunication. Oops. Oh well. We walked back up and it was productive because I bought some souvenirs and it wasn't that bad of a walk really.

We got back to the hostel and decided to go out for dinner. We couldn't find anywhere that had room and was cheap except The Elephant Room. I had remembered hearing the name before but it wasn't until I walked in that I realized what it was. JK Rowling started writing Harry Potter in this very restaurant about 10 years ago on some napkins. Weird. I had haggis, neeps, and tatties (picture 10). Which to normal people means meatloaf-like stuff, sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes. It was delicious. Vanessa tried some haggis and hated it. She got scarakopita which was fillo dough with spinach and goat cheese. I tried some and didn't like. It was a good thing we didn't switch orders! After dinner, we went to a pub and I had a pint. It was cool just being around all the Scottish people there. We went back to the hostel and hung out (i.e. reading and just relaxing) until it was time for us to walk to the Coach Station. The coach ride back was pretty uneventful except that I got about 3 hours of sleep again. Ugh.

Scotland was really cool. I had such a great time there and saw so many things. It did feel like kind of a whirlwind tour but that's what it was, so it makes sense. St. Andrew's was perfect and so was Arthur's Seat. Like I said, I had a lot of fun and it was nice to kind of get a primer of being away and traveling before our spring break (in 2 days!!!).