Land of the Scots

We have been in Edinburgh for almost 10 days now and I have to say it is an awesome city. There are tons to do and see, the city has a certain charm about it that a lot of the other cities we have been to seem to have lost. Such as London is an amazing city with a huge number of things to do but I still Like Edinburgh more. Staying in a hostel for seven days has been nice; we can kind of stretch out more not having to worry about leaving soon. It has also allowed us to make some good friends; the hostel we are staying at has about 12 long timers who have been here for over 2 months. It’s been nice being about to get to know people better, hang out more and really become friends as opposed to the water friends we make at most hostels who just flow through your life.

We have done some cool things here. For the first and second of April Edinburgh castle had freed admittance, so that worked out well saving us 10 Pounds. The Castle was cool, great views from it of the city (pictures are posted). We got to see the history of the castle, history of Scotland and it Military and, we were able to see the Scottish Crown Jewels which was cool because they date back a long time and are the Originals unlike the British ones were destroyed in the past and remade. It was a great thing to be able to wonder around such an amazing place, so much history has transpired there, and it was such an experience to be able to be there.

We did a ghost tour one night back because one of our friends was doing it and it sounded cool. We got taken around the city and being let in on a lot of the grizzly details of Edinburgh past some horrible tortures and stuff went on there, hard to imagine them doing these things to people. We ended up the graveyard, there is one section of the graveyard is locked and only the tour goes in there because there have been too many paranormal attacks. We went in there, in to the most haunted part and unfortunately nothing happened, well except for a man in a rubber ghost mask jumping out and giving everyone the fright of their lives. The guide was awesome very funny and really made the evening with all the stories and grim jokes and it was a fun evening.

Yesterday we did a tour up to Loch Ness and back, it took 12 hours and the tour guide wasn’t particularly good, but we had a good time. We saw castles and cows and the Mountains of Scotland, right now it is all yellow, so it wasn’t that pretty. Loch Ness its self was cool, it’s big being 22 km long. It looks like a lot of the lakes back home, surrounded by mountains, except it had an old castle on the shore. The castle (Castle Urquhart) lays in ruins now but it was and adventure to walk around, we ended up buying plastic swords and Jeff got a Viking helmet and we had random battles around the castle which was great fun. I didn’t see the Loch Ness Monster though, but I really didn’t have to much hope of that, but it was still great fun.

Tomorrow we head off, I think we are going to Gatwick for a couple days then maybe to Oban, the Isle of Sky and up to Inverness, after that we are heading down through Liverpool to whales and the surrounding areas before heading over to France. I really like Scotland and all the people here are awesome, friendly and nice, I’m going to be sad to leave Edinburgh it’s been great staying here.