Edinburgh Day #1

10/17/07

Our hotel in Edinburgh is awesome! It’s a real hotel, not the pensions we were staying in for Munich and Prague (which were great, but noisy and not as nice as American hotels). We have a view of the castle from our hotel because we are 2 blocks away from it!





Here are the bars across the street:


We also have a gym and an indoor pool that we can use! It’s so great. So we actually worked out in the morning and played in the pool some. We are just feeling so much better now that we are in Scotland. I mean, Munich and Prague were great, but we are more ourselves here in Edinburgh. Plus, everyone speaks English, which is so wonderful after being in countries where not many people spoke English (even in Munich!), and so far we aren’t having too much trouble understanding people with accents.

So, after exercising, we decided not to do any sightseeing. We just wanted to walk around a little and get to know our surroundings, especially because it was raining some. We went to this little Italian café right across the street from our hotel (our street has a bunch of cafes, restaurants, and bars on it; it’s great!) and had pizza. It was really good.

Then we walked around our neighborhood a little and went into this Whiskey store (all they sell is whiskey and some airplane bottles of other liquor) and got a bottle of really good Scottish whiskey. It’s actually very light and good (I actually drank some straight without lurching!). The guy in the store described it like you would a wine. It was oaky, with from fruity flavors, and he said some other stuff too I can’t remember. So we went back to our hotel room and drank some whiskey and watched tv and played cards.





We got antsy and decided to do some bar hopping to get a feeling for the bars on our street and hopefully meet some people. The first bar we went in, called The Last Drop, was a recommendation from my Lonely Planet book. It was small and not a great atmosphere, so we only had one beer and then left. Then we went into a bar called Biddy Mulligans.

Right away we met this English guy named Paul who was really drunk (he had gotten up that morning, started driving to work, and then kept going and ended up here in Edinburgh because he hates his job; too funny). This was our first encounter with American bias since we have been traveling. He said we come from a horrible country and Americans are all self-centered, etc, but yet he was saying how great England is and he loves the Queen and was acting like he was better than anyone (especially the Scottish). We were hanging out for a few hours and finally it got so annoying I had to tell him off and set him straight…twice. I think he was afraid of me at the end :)

However, because of Paul we got to meet this Scottish girl (Melanie Archibalde – great last name, huh?) who is really cool. She actually reminds me of Aleesa Rizzi (wavy blonde hair, freckles, similar nose). We hung out with her for a while and she wrote down a bunch of places we shouldn’t miss, so that’s awesome.

We also met this group of Australians and New Zealanders in this bar, who have been traveling for months on this bus tour around Europe (there were 51 people on the bus tour), and then a small group of them decided to come to Edinburgh and then to Dublin after the tour was over. We have met a lot of Australians who are on these long tours of Europe. They just pick up and go, kind of like we did, but they do the hostel thing and just wing it everywhere they go. It’s crazy how many of them we have met!

So we hung out with the Aussies for a while in that bar and they invited us to participate in a bar crawl with them and some other Aussies later on. So we met up with them later and went on the bar crawl. It was a lot of fun and we even got some discounts on beer because of them. Sweet. I think we made it to 3 bars, and they were still going when we decided to turn in at the oh so early hour of 1:30! However, before we left, I met some Aussie that was saying that all Americans are self-centered! He had met so many and they were all arrogant. It’s like, why would he say that to me? Was there any reason for it? It really pissed me off. I hope we don’t encounter more of this bias. I’d hate to have to ream someone out again ;)

Kristie with part of the group (from left, clockwise - Renee, Dave, Charlie - he's only 18!, red-head, Kristie, Wayne, and don't know his name):


Aren't we cute? :)


Paul with Aussie girl (she has beautiful natural red hair and blue eyes, don't ya think? But we can't remember her name!):


Kristie and Paul with Aussie girl (we can't remember her name either!):


Dave:


Kristie and Wayne:


Kristie and Renee (I talked to her a lot; she's cool):


Paul and Wayne (see how Paul is holding his back and Wayne is making a face? Paul is telling him about how he fell in our Prague hotel room. He was talking about that a lot :) hehehe):


Wayne and massage therapist (she was hanging out with us, but I don't know her name):


When we got back to our hotel (which didn’t take long because the bar crawl was on our street – our hotel location is awesome! Food, bars, and right next to the castle and other sights! What more can you ask for?!?!), we were hungry so Paul went down the street to look for any place open that does take-out and found a kabob place (the food wasn’t very good, but whatever, we were drunk). And I turned on the tv and found Monday night football on! How great is that?!?! But since it was 2 AM by the time we finished eating our kabob take-out, we were ready to pass out, so we didn’t get to watch much football unfortunately. But it was still cool that it was on!

I can’t wait until tomorrow! Sightseeing and hanging out more with the Aussies! They are so much fun. We love this place already!!