Edinburgh: City of the Castle, Writers and the Dead pt.2

And the shame that comes from my poor posting habits.


Well then, last time I told tales of magic and marshmallow-y hot chocolate. And then I never said anything again. That's pretty lame of me and I apologize. Ok, give me a minute to remember, it's been awhile now.

Aright, so Friday, we took the bus down to Edinburgh and got there around 11. We met up with 2 friends of Krista's, found some lunch eventually at a little pub and then on to the hostel, blah blah blah. Cut to later that evening. We decided, in the pouring rain, to walk about 15 minutes to a theater to see a play one of Krista's friends had found on her iphone. Damn people with their damn useful iphones when I don't have one. Geez. Anyway, we bought tickets, got dinner at the Shakespeare pub, and then went to the theater. The play was "Confessions of a Justified Sinner" It was...alright. I liked the premise, a hardcore Calvinist is convinced, either by his skitzophrenia or by the devil, that he needs to kill a few people: the town priest who preaches in salvation for everyone rather than predestination, his brother, his mother, and his lover. But he forgets that he's done these things. And it's all so long and confusing and full of thick Scottish accents. But there was Haagen Daz ice cream at intermission, so that was pretty cool. Afterwards we made our way to our respective places of rest.

Saturday Krista, Brian and I were on our own since Krista's friends had booked a highlands tour that we'd pretty much already done. Instead, we decided to go to the National Museum of Scotland:

FOR FREE. Because all the museums are free in the UK. Which is awesome. As was the museum. All of the exhibits were really interesting. We wound up spending a few hours there. Then when we left it was raining again so we just went around the corner for food.

I think somewhere in here is when we went to the Elephant House and found the J.K. Rowling note.

I do know however, that evening was the night we went on the City of the Dead tour that took us down under the bridge into "the Vault". When the bridge was built, the planners had intended the space beneath it to be used for storage and work rooms. The problem though was that they never properly built any of it to be water proof, thereby leaving the spaces useless. Well, they had to do something with them so that is where they sent their garbage. And by garbage, I mean people. The poorest of the poor were forced to live in the dark, wet, cold spaces under the bridge. It's pretty freaking intense under there. I definitely recommend taking a tour if you're ever in Edinburgh.

Afterwards, the three of us were in a somewhat uncomfortable mood, so we wandered our way to a pub for a pint of cider. The one we happened to go in, on recommendation of a random guy going into said pub, turned out to be great. They even had a young guy playing acoustic guitar and singing covers of a lot of different songs. It was really great fun.

Sunday was when we went to the castle. We had to pay £12, but it was definitely worth it. We spent a full two hours looking at all the different rooms and exhibits, including the Scottish crown jewels. It was all very impressive. See?

Bask in my approval!!!

At some point after that, we took the bus back to Aberdeen and I for one went right to bed.



Ok, I PROMISE I will write something soon that is not about Edinburgh and more about stuff around here. I SWEAR I HAVE THINGS TO SAAAAY!!