Other posts with the tag: Scotland
Hogmanay redux
Destination: Edinburgh.
Destination: Edinburgh.
Any great adventure that ends in a cancellation deserves a second chance. And this time is no exception. This time however, I will be joined not only by Chris, but with Kim, Darleen, Shawn and James, all great folks. And for Kim and Darleen, they are currently living in Edinburgh and London respectively, so joining us will be a matter of getting out of bed.
The Scottish Highlands and Isle of Skye or… Inverness will do!
New year’s day, and Chris is actually downstairs already, waiting in line for his 2 slices of wonder bread. I’m half dead, and by the time I get down there, Chris has new friends. Two cute Aussie girls this time (Kelly and Suzanne). Chris must definitely be feeling better than I am.
We tour Edinburgh Castle, visit the Elephant House once more, and actually didn’t do anything crazy that day.
Next day we head out, and I am grateful that I don’t have to suffer through the sliced breads anymore.
We buy tickets, re-assess our time left in Scotland, and decide instead of Skye, we’ll do a run in with Nessie the Monster up in Loch Ness. To Inverness then!
4 hours into the train ride, and quite suddenly, like that feeling you get that you shouldn’t have eaten something but you did anyways, I’m suffering from chills, cold feet and a slight fever. Prognosis: Ken is hungry.
Inverness Chinese Takeout = deadly flu.
Inverness shows up on the radar and we head over to Inverness Student Hotel (a 2.5 mile walk). It’s a very cool place, straight out of an MTV Real World episode (Chris also agrees). I pop some Airborne just to be safe and we head out to grab Chinese fastfood. That was some tasty fastfood. And that would be the only meal we would have for the next two days.
That night, my prognosis changed from hunger to… the flu. The 2×4 piece of wood slammed to your face kind of flu; unexpected, sudden and downright ugly. Chris had it too. We were wrecked.
I had nightmares, every hour, for the next 48 hours. I would be stuck in my bed all this time, reduced to my saltine crackers and fizzled out soda.
So, Inverness was great, from what I could see outside of my window. 2 days later, we’re back in Edinburgh, still sick as dogs. I’ve used up my emergency stash of cold meds (coughing every 30 seconds is not fun, or conducive to friendly relations).
And this is where those cheap ass tickets we bought came around to haunt us. Our plane lands back in Atlanta, GA but causes us to miss our connection flight. We’re bumped to a straight flight to LA (instead of Atlanta to Vegas to LA), after only waiting for 2 hours, but our luggages wouldn’t meet us there. No, it wasn’t fun. Our plane was in taxi mode for an hour before finally taking off. On top of that, they didn’t serve any snacks, or drinks for that matter.
We’re back, finally. That was some adventure, and I’d sure do it all again.
Dealing with cancellations, $100 private parties and the Italians saving the party!
Another late morning start, and this time I ABHOR the sliced wonder breads. The cute Polish bar/attendee girl only makes this part of the day slightly more manageable. Chris agrees. I stick to my instant oat meal that I brought with me. It’s only slightly better. Their supposed boiling hot water is tepid at best. I am now eating half cooked half mush instant oat meal.
Too early to feel defeated, and to wash down the half digested uncooked oatmeal, I did what every other Aussie does, start drinking to ring in the new year at 10 in the morning (it’s gotta be new year somewhere else right?). Chris is right there with me. He’s a trooper… for now.
A few hours later, Chris is suffering from God knows what he ate last night. I’m suffering from the early morning drinks… and the empty stomach. I still don’t have pain meds, so my headache keeps me company.
Luckily, I feel better towards the evening, Chris feels the same. This just might be a good awesome night after all.
It’s early evening now, and we’re chilling with the new Italian friends (Laura and Roberto) Chris has made. We never make it out Belushi’s for most of the night (until right before midnight for the street party). As every hour that passes by, the place gets more and more packed.
Plan B was Cargo.
21:00: People are rowdy, I can barely hear my new Italian friends from all the noise. Rain and gale force winds starts pelting down pedestrians outside. This makes the pub even more packed to the brim. I even almost get into the middle of a brawl between a drunk Scot and security. Not good, plus I’m hungry.
23:00: The gale force winds are now using beer bottles as projectiles and umbrellas as eye hazard accessories. No street party what…so…ever. The streets are empty and police are blocking off the roads. Time for plan B.
Our Italian friends invite us to some club. I’m down for anything at this point, so we hop into a cab. Cargo, that was our destination.
Unfortunately, we arrive at the place, and we get stopped by the bouncers. He asks everyone to take off their coats/jackets in this freezing rain. That includes me I suppose. Everyone’s wearing decent/trendy clothes. Somehow, the Italians phenagle and we ALL get in… and for free (from the $112 cover charge)!!! Life is sweet after all.
The countdown came and we conquered, I downed as many G&T’s as I could get my hands on, and had a bloody time. Happy New Year everyone!
Why the bloody toast? What Wonderbread, hiking and street parades have in common
It’s Saturday and I feel better. A lot. A bit of a late start, but just about on time for the last minute call for an 1/8th of a breakfast. It wasn’t really breakfast, the only food available were bread… a mother-load of bread, a toaster, and absolutely no butter, or any kind of jam.
After we scarf down our 2 rations of sliced wonder bread, we stroll up Royal Mile and check out The Elephant House, a place Chris holds dear to his heart. He loves this place, and soon after find myself feeling the same.
And if you’re ever in Edinburgh, and you happen to walk into this cafe, you have to check out their unobstructed views of Edinburgh Castle and their bathrooms. They are… very… quaint. And if memory serves me right, their faucets combine hot and cold water!
***OK, backtrack a little bit since this was NOT amusing to me.
So it’s earlier that day, I go to wash up (this was right before the sliced wonder bread fiasco) and I look down and see two separate faucets in front of me. Okay, no big deal. They split the hot and the cold. As I remember, hot is left, and cold is right (feel free to double check your bathroom/kitchen sink faucets!). This little application of knowledge from experience clearly and utterly failed me. Cold is left and Hot is right.
***
While thankfully, The Elephant House had edible food besides sliced bread, and I enjoyed their latté and croissants. I also made use of their internet café (to which you are reading this now) while Chris checks his email, and most likely his travel blog too.
We head out to Arthur’s Seat trail in Holyrood Park to enjoy the elusive sun (that was out for the first time in weeks). On the way Chris decides to fork over some £’s for a pipe set. He laughs as we’re walking off the pipe shop as he tries to convince me that he’s made a wise choice considering he has waited 3-4 years to get one since his last stint in Edinburgh. We start climbing the trail, but it ends out being a wash because we didn’t have enough sun and by 4 p.m. the clouds and rain have started to come back. We end up coming down, but not before soaking in some panoramic city views.
The search for Arthur's Seat proved fruitless as the sun set and the winds picked up.
We end up at The Tass while Chris enjoys his beer and I scarf down some non memorable Scottish smoked salmon sandwich. It tasted tuna to me. We return to the hostel and chill for an hour. Next on the agenda is the George St. parade. We walk down Prince St. and see a huge group of crowd huddled in the corner of Scotland’s National Gallery. The whole crowd erupts to a roar as the festival begins again with a big band of bag pipers leading the way. Now if you want to get in front to see the whole thing, you definitely have to push your way through. And that’s what I did. If you also want to lose your friend stat, this is definitely the way to do it. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize this at the time, so when I look back, Chris was no more, lost in the sea of people.
It was too much fun watching strangely dressed performers dance around with ten foot LED lit poles and giant headphones strapped to their heads while giant balls of fire explode over their head. Oddly enough, 4 hours into the street parade, I bump into Chris, haphazardly and literally. The festival has switched gears and if 4 hours of in your face pyrotechnics, confusing theater and weird acrobatics haven’t tired you out, the Scots have more in line for you. And they sure did not disappoint with their live bands, bratwursts and Ceilidh line dance (in no particular order).
I highly recommend doing the quarter mile line dance at least once (and only once!) if you ever come across one. Mix hyper giddy and friendly people with flailing arms and you have a cocktail mix of the extremely fun and the dangerous projectile limbs at the same time.
Hogmanay, kilts and Braveheart
People really should stop describing how Edinburgh is. It. Is. Awesome! You need to see it for yourself. I’ll try anyways, vainly.
Edinburgh is quite the majestic city, in that it really demands a sense of awe and then some more, with extra heaps of charm, character, and fashionably well dressed and good looking women. It’s rooted in tradition and slow to change yet knows how to throw a party, a festival and more.
St. Christopher’s Inn was our base of operation, and we sure picked the right hostel. It’s situated right in the middle of the city, which means, if you ever get totally drunk, it’s not such a pain getting to your hostel at 4 in the morning. Unfortunately, given the rooms we had (located 2nd to the top floor), if you were mighty drunk, you’d have to suffer the six flights of painful, agonizing stairs.
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