After
a lot of catching up and a small nap on the train, we finally arrived in
Edinburgh! We checked into our hostel, which was located across the street from
the Edinburgh castle, I couldn’t have asked for a better view. Edinburgh itself
is set-up on a large hill. On one end of the High street lies the Castle and on
the other lies the Hollyrood House, where the royal family stays. The distance
in between the two is roughly a mile and thus the High Street is often called
the Royal mile. We walked along the Royal mile, and stopped into one of the
pubs for dinner. I went traditional Scottish with some Bangers and Mash and
even tried some Haggis! (I’ll spare you the details of what Haggis is, but if
you’re curious I suggest you google it, it was actually quite tasty!) We
finished up with some sticky toffee pudding and headed home to get some rest.
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| Edinburgh! |
The next day we got the full Edinburgh experience! We started out by taking the Sandeman’s free walking tour. The tour was really informative and to top it all off our tour guide looked and talked like a Scottish pirate. We walked around the city seeing the sights and learning all about the Scottish origins of Harry Potter, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Sherlock Holmes. We finished the tour and had lunch at the café in which JK Rowling sat and wrote Harry Potter. We were lucky enough to get the table right by the window where we enjoyed our lunch and tea while feeling exceptionally inspired.
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| JK Rowling's cafe! This was our table, with the view of the Castle out the window! |
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| The Greyfriar Graveyard! |
That evening we headed to the Scottish Whisky Experience, and what an experience it was! They start you off on a amusement park-like barrel ride through the creation of Scottish Whisky followed immediately by a full presentation on the different types of whisky Scotland has to offer (the presentation was fully-equipped with individual scratch and sniff cards for every type). They finish up by taking you through the largest collection of Whisky in the world and by giving you a Whisky sample. Disappointed by the fact that it didn’t taste anything like tropical fruit flavor the scratch and sniff card promised, we all somehow managed to get through it… it was definitely an experience to say the least… We finished day with a ghost tour of the city that took us all over the city at night! It was really cool because Edinburgh is claimed to be the second spookiest city in Europe (not sure what the first is, or how they even determine that…)
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| The largest collection of Whisky in the World! |
The next day was Halloween! After taking the ghost tour the night before we quickly realized that we had picked the perfect Halloween destination! We woke up and had a delicious breakfast of Scottish porridge in a little café near our hostel and then did some shopping. We then decided to take on Arthur’s seat in the afternoon. Arthur’s seat is a giant hill in Edinburgh that provides a beautiful panoramic view of the city. The only problem is that once you get to the top you are faced with torrential winds. You honestly could not stand up for more than 3 seconds without feeling like you were going to be blown over. The excessive wind combined with the jagged cliff edge was a deadly combo but in the end, we all got a huge laugh out of the fact that it was so excessively windy and against all odds, we actually managed to get a few good pictures (wearing a headband that day was the best decision of my life!). The view from the top of Arthur’s seat was absolutely stunning and definitely worth the climb and the tangled mess that my hair was in.
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| We climbed to the top of that!! |
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| Sooooo windy, but the view was worth it! |
That night we celebrated Halloween by doing an organized pub-crawl. Although it was no Halloween in IV, it was so much fun! Having practically no room in our backpacks (the pains to travelling on Ryanair) we had to keep our costumes simple, so that night we busted out the nerdy glasses and suspenders and took on the streets of Edinburgh.
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| Halloween!
The next morning was a bit rough as we checked out of the hostel and boarded a bus at 4:30am the next morning. Lucky for us we had been prepared and had all bought our own bottle of Iron-Bru. Claimed to be the 2nd national drink of Scotland (second only to whisky of course…), Iron-bru is a sort of orange soda energy drink. Unlucky for us, it tasted like crushed up smarties. We laughed at ourselves as we sat deliriously on the bus choking down our warm drinks.
I do feel a little bad because the last thing we did on Scottish land was toss away four nearly full bottles of Scotland’s “finest” drink before heading in to board our flight to Dublin. So to any Scots we offended, I’m sorry.
Our
next stop was Dublin, which I was especially excited to see! (Still wasn’t over
the time my entire family went there without me…I guess I can forgive you all
now…)We boarded the bus for the city center and the first thing we saw was a
poster for Alcoholics Anonymous; yup, we had successfully made it to Ireland!
We
took it easy the rest of the day, as we were all exhausted after getting 2
hours of sleep the night before. We met up with Katie’s friend Amber who was
staying with us in Dublin and walked around the city, stopping in at a café to
get some lunch and indulge in some people watching. Later that night we met up
with some of Katie’s other friends who are studying abroad in Dublin. We had
dinner with them and went back to their adorable apartment in the city to hang
out!
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| Lady Justice outside the Dublin Castle |
The next day we took the free walking tour of Dublin! (We’ve now become accustomed to doing the Sandeman’s tour in every major European city…) We walked all around the city, seeing the sights including Trinity College, the Temple Bar area and Saint Stephens Green. We were even able to see them filming a show about the Titanic outside of the castle area. After the tour, we took the afternoon to do the obligatory Guinness factory tour. We walked around the factory and had a pint at the Gravity bar, enjoying the 360 view of Dublin. Later that night we went out on a pub-crawl that took us to some really awesome pubs around the city! Two of the bars were owned by U2 and another one had a really great Irish band playing live!
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| Christ Church |
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| Temple Bar! |
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| Lovely day for a Guinness!
The next day was our last day in Dublin; we woke up had breakfast and did a little shopping. We all bought each other Irish Claddagh rings, which are a symbol of love and friendship. Shortly after that, it was time for Crystal, Katie and I to say goodbye to Lani and Amber and head back to Canterbury. This is where our problems began…
It seems that every trip we go ends up having some sort of hitch… for Dublin it was catching the bus. We left the hostel over two hours before our flight, leaving plenty of time for the 30-minute bus to the airport. We set out with our backpacks filled to the brim, to find the bus stop but couldn’t find it anywhere. Finally after about 10 minutes of searching and about 3 minutes being harassed by a small group of children, we went back to the hostel to ask for directions. We eventually made it to the bus stop 10 minutes before our bus was to arrive. We waited patiently and when it arrived we approached the curb only to see it zoom past us. The next one wasn’t coming for another forty minutes, so naturally we started running down the busy streets of Dublin trying to catch it. After that failed, we walked another 6 blocks to the next stop where the next bus was coming in 20 minutes. Once again we waited….then we continued to wait….and wait… until we realized that the bus wasn’t coming. By that time it had been over 40 minutes and the next one was scheduled to come soon. We were beginning to get really worried but luckily the bus finally arrived! We were so relieved to be on the bus, and although we were cutting it extremely close to our flight time we thought it’d be ok.
It was approximately 7 minutes into our ride when the bus lights started to flicker. The engine shut off then quickly came back on again. We looked at each other in shock. This cycle continued about 5 times before they made the announcement that the bus had officially broken down and that a replacement was coming in 20 minutes. We were in such a state of disbelief that we just laughed. We knew we’d be missing our flight. Then, luckily for us a different bus appeared 5 minutes later.
When we arrived at the airport we had roughly 10 minutes to get on our flight. It was then that we became those obnoxious people running on the moving walkway. We finally made to our gate JUST in time. We found our seats on the plane and took our first deep breath in 2 hours. Such a relief. Then, to top it all off, the plane was delayed 40 minutes (typical Ryanair). I fell asleep on the runway and woke up to find we were still on the ground. Needless to say it was quite the adventure, but we eventually made it back to Canterbury after an amazing trip to Edinburgh and Dublin.
It was then time to face the consequences of skipping out on reading week….we spent the next few days locked in our rooms writing the papers we had pushed to the back of our minds for the week; luckily the trip was definitely worth it!
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