ScOtLaNd: DaY 3- EdInBuRgH aGaIn

Sunday, November 9th

Action packed day today. I called my grandparents last night to get their advice since they had already been to Edinburgh, and realized that one day is not enough here.

First item on the agenda this morning was to go to St. Mary’s Church. We were told it was a beautiful Catholic church and originally wanted to go to mass inside, but there just wasn’t time. We got a good look inside though, and it was very impressive, but not so much as some of the churches I have been to lately. Although I’m not sure how comparable anything is next to Notre Dame, St. Paul’s or Westminster Abbey…

I bought a St. Anthony medal which I plan on sending home for Nick for football.

After that, we took a cab over to the Church Hill Theatre. Rachael performed here a few years ago for the Fringe Theatre Festival, so she really wanted to go back. A very friendly janitor let us inside and backstage, and we were able to see the dressing rooms and go on the stage itself. The interior was pretty and had classical architecture and the ceilings had coffered arches.

After visiting the theatre, we went over to Edinburgh Castle. It was really cool wandering around inside, seeing different museums such as the armory, prisoners, crown jewels, and military monuments. Today was remembrance day, basically the equivalent to our Veteran’s Day, and we conveniently were at the castle right when the cannons were shot for the 11:00 salute. Everyone around Britain have been wearing little poppy flowers on their shirts for the past few weeks for the occasion to honor soldiers who have served in wars throughout the years.

We left the castle and started to book it downtown toward Salsibury Craiggs and Arthur’s Seat. These are huge volcanoes right outside of the Holyrood Palace on the Royal Mile, and we wanted to climb to the top before we had to leave today. We stopped in a few souvenir shops on the way to the other end of the Mile, and then made it to the park. It was really, really windy, and it took us a while to get around the mountain to climb to the right one. We were really tired, but we had to go fast due to time restraints. We booked it as fast as we could and made it over to the foot of the dormant volcano in about half an hour from the castle, and then went up to the top, climbing through rocky stairs some of the way, and then just through steep, rocky terrain.

We made it to the top a lot faster than we anticipated, and when we got to the top the view was awesome. We got to overlook the entire city, the water, and the other hilly regions as well. There was a big cement block on top of the tower that we all signed before heading back down. It was so windy that we had a hard time standing upright and had to grab on to something or someone for support. It was so much fun, and I’m really glad we had time to get up there.

We started our journey downward and me, being the ridiculous person I am, stepped on a rock and decided to start some crazy antics. However, it came back to get me because the second I yelled out “Hey Rachael!” with the intention of jumping off and scaring/attempting to tackle her, I slipped and fell in a bunch of mud, doing some sort of backwards summersault and flipping over… completely covered in mud… I guess the joke was on me… Don’t picture me in one of my hysterical laughing fits afterwards, because that obviously wouldn’t have been what happened for the following 20 minutes… (wink, wink).

We made our way back down the volcano, and went back into town. We had rushed so quickly to get up there and do everything that morning/afternoon due to limited time, and somehow had time to spare at the end of all of our planned activities for the day. We went into some more souvenir shops where I bought possibly my favorite souvenir so far: a music dvd of the ‘Red Hot Chili Pipers.’ Hehe, I love puns! This should be interesting…

We got a few drinks at Starbucks (I’m sorry… I am American and I can go to Starbucks if I want to! I love it!) and then carried on down the Royal Mile heading back toward our hotel. We went into a million stores due to Rachael’s Scottish shopping addiction (I seriously think she needs intervention…), but made it back eventually.

On the way back, I stopped dead in my tracks and saw the funniest item ever in one of the windows we passed. Nothing related to Scotland at all, simply my graphic design cheesy humor. It was a mug with a solid color ‘swatch’ and underneath it said Pantone 2490 C, or whatever the corresponding code was. I laughed so hard… and ended up buying one. I love cheesy music and art jokes… or just cheesy humor in general.

We made it back to the hotel, grabbed our bags, and got to the bus about 15 minutes or so early. When we got to the train station, we had to wait a little bit for our train, and were approached by a few crazy drunk guys who were going to have a long, probably unsuccessful journey ahead of them. They asked us all kinds of questions regarding the train we were waiting for, trying to figure out if it was theirs or not, but really, didn’t get anything out of what we were saying… or more like our attempts to get rid of them… We went and sat in a coffee shop for a while, and then left soon after.

Due to construction on the railways, we had a bit of a crazy journey home. Our train got to NorthGate after about 3 hours on our first ride, where we transferred to some sort of a bus convoy, to another train in Grantham. Due to delays on our first train, we barely made the last train and literally had to run to catch it. We made it back to King’s Cross a little before 11:00pm and connected with the tube back home.

We ran home from the tube station, trying to take shelter under our umbrellas, but failed miserably. This was that biggest rainstorm I have seen yet… we were soaked, however made it back successfully, unpacked, and went to bed.