eruptions of kilts and bagpipes...

This blog is a little late coming and may get a little long. But never-the-less, here we go. 

dan, maddy, kelsie, jade, me, elizabeth...
(standing at the top of Edinburgh Castle)

I took a wee-little weekend trip to Edinburgh, Scotland with the people that you see in the photo above. It was seriously a beyond-excellent trip. Let me tell you a bit about it. So we woke up in the very early hours of the morning to hop on the train, which is a ten minute walk from where we live on Ffriddoedd site at the University. I walked with my larger-than-average purse and backpack stuffed with everything I needed for my travels. My purse had a whole loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, an apple, as well as other purse-like things. (Thanks Amber Smith for letting me buy it off you from our garage sale this summer, it is kinda perfect for traveling.) 


The train left at around 5 am and we all spread out on the amazingly spacious seats and slept as comfortable as we would have in our own beds.


Boy, I hope you don't believe that. Haha. We each had our own seat which was nice, but we were all balled up on our seats, trying not to let out heads hang off, so the train attendant wouldn't wake us up and tell us to move. Anywho, we slept for an hour and then switched trains, blah blah blah, and headed on a three and a half hour train ride all the way up the United Kingdom to Edinburgh. I slept the entire way, it was safe to say my back and neck hurt a decent amount. 


Our first goal was to find our hostel, lucky for us it was just off of Blair Street, so we knew that it wouldn't be too sketchy. 

Blair Street sign directly above me,
of course i got a picture with it...

We then found our hostel, which was only 11£ a night. Pretty good price for hostel with free tea all the time. The Hostel was called the Cowgate Tourist Hostel, can't get much more tourist-y than that. Let me tell you. 

yep, with the picture of the cow
and the obnoxious colors...

We got our clean sheets and got to our 6-person room. We were there pretty early in the day, but I think everyone wanted to take a quick nap, we decided to keep moving. We were perfectly placed in Edinburgh. It was just a short walk to uptown, but far enough away so it wasn't loud at night. Oh and did I mention the free tea! Yum. The first day we decided to look through some shops and then find the Edinburgh Harley Davidson Shop. 

it took us over an hour,
but we found it...

kelsey and i
looking like fasionistas...

The Harley Davidson store was a bit out of the way, but we found it eventually. The dress shop was very little and quite great. I tried on a few dresses but didn't absolutely love them. And if I remember my mom right, she always says "If you do not absolutely love it, do not buy it, because you won't like it anymore at home." Well thanks mom. The dress Kelsey is wearing is furry, and the dress that I am sporting, contrary to belief, is not a night-gown but an actual dress. I know, I should have bought it...On the way back to uptown, there were a few little girls who were selling perfume. And, I cannot just turn down little girls with great accents. I gave them 20 pents and they were ready to give me a full bottle of their homemade perfume, I took a squirt and said that it smelt wonderful, but I did not need the whole bottle. 


Edinburgh was so lively. There were street performers everywhere. My favorite tourist thing, was that everywhere I went, I literally could hear a faint sound of a bagpipe, and almost every store had cashmere scarves, wool sweaters, and kilts. So stereotypical. But Edinburgh was beautiful. 

Street Performers...

We walked all over the place. We went to the Edinburgh Castle and saw the Crown Jewels, and we went to a few museums, which were not boring. We ended up going to the Hard Rock Cafe Edinburgh. Which was absolutely delicious, and so much fun. 

my new boyfriend,
at the edinburgh castle...

We walked past the Scottish Parliament building which was actually really modern style architecture, which is weird to find in Europe. And just beyond the Parliament building was an old [inactive] volcano! So we decided to climb it. Yep, you read correctly, I climbed a volcano. And of course, God made it with perfect timing. The clouds cleared out and we got some sun while we were climbing, which made for great views of Edinburgh. 

windblown hair and
 the view of edinburgh...

jade, elizabeth, me, maddi, and kelsey

way down the volcano
the ocean in the distance...

The last day we were there we decided to go see another tourist-y area. It was a hill with several ruins on top of it. If you were shopping on High Street, and you looked up the street you could see them. We were all really excited to go. It wasn't too terribly nice of a day, but the ruins were really cool. They were also really random, there was a large dome-like building, an old Roman-looking columns, and a very tall building-ish thing. Yes, you are welcome for the legitimate terminology I just used right there. 

the ladies hugging the ruins...

Edinburgh was absolutely gorgeous, and by the end of the trip I was exhausted from all of the walking, and I was ready to go back to Bangor. It is always a good feeling at the end of a trip to be ready to go back home. Bangor is such a good place to call home, for the next few months at least. Oh, God is so good for letting me be here. I just hope that I can soak most of this experience up and learn from it. 
Thanks for reading...

"For greater things are yet to come, and greater things are still to be done in this city..."

God of this City.