A wee trip to Scotland!

I got up at 4 last Wednesday morning, and not just because I'm masochistic! Nora and I were scheduled to take an 8:40 flight out of London Stansted into Glasgow, before which we had to get to Victoria train station and take a 1.5 hour bus to the airport. We planned to leave on the 5:40 bus, but Fate had other plans: namely, that Nora would oversleep (hey! oversleeping is supposed to be my job!), wake up when I called at 5:20, and haul ass to the bus station just in time to miss the 6:00 bus. At 6:30, we were finally on our way, and made it to the airport just before the check-in closed. Needless to say, when we arrived in Glasgow we were both exhausted, neither of us having got very much sleep the night before. We did a bit of exploring around the city, which very much retains the look of Victorian Gothic, saw Glasgow Cathedral, ate at a wee curry shop, went into our first kiltmaker's shop, had some delicious afternoon tea... and then called the people we were couchsurfing with that night. I think we originally planned to go out and experience the Glasgow nightlife, which has an amazing reputation, but when we got to our host's house we were both exhausted and coming down with colds, and we ended up just talking to Laura and Alex (who were both very friendly, well-travelled, and easygoing--a great experience for our first try at couchsurfing) for a few hours, having tea and dinner, and then going to bed.

Photos of Glasgow here.

We got up around 7:00 Thursday morning, said goodbye to our hosts, bought some decongestant medication, and headed to the station for our train to Edinburgh. When we arrived, our new host (Kim) picked us up from the station and we walked to her house, where we had tea (again), and went out to explore. We started by walking up the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle, which we took pictures of but did not enter because of its £12 entry fee. We then started making our way back down the hill, went to a kiltmaking exhibition, and explored a few more kilt shops and tiny alleyways leading off the main road. After a cheap hot lunch at a nearby diner, we got ambitious and decided to climb to the top of Arthur's Seat, the biggest hill in the vicinity, from which you can see most of the city and the seacoast. Sounds brilliant, right? Except as we climbed, the winds kept on getting worse, and as soon as we rounded the corner of the summit, we were literally flattened against the side of the hill. We could barely move, and tried sitting there for a while until the wind let up... but it didn't, so we eventually had to convince ourselves to move back the way we came. Our mouths were being forced open by the wind (but I could barely breath), and dirt was blowing in our faces. Normally, I love storms and high winds, but that was the first time I've actually been scared of them. I quite literally felt like I might be blown off the edge at more than one point. We found out the next morning that the winds had been the beginning of a huge Atlantic storm that was blowing in even as we arrived to Edinburgh.

When we got down, both of us were really shaken, so we went to the first pub we could find, to clean the dirt out of our ears and have a hot toddy (hot water, whiskey, honey, cinnamon, and lemon), which, by the way, was delicious. After relaxing for a good long while and letting ourselves warm up, we found our way back to our host's apartment. There, we ate our cheap dinner and met the other people who would be staying with us--Kim's boyfriend, Ivan, and Josh, their friend from London. We relaxed and chatted for a while, and drank a bit of cider before we all headed off to a nearby pub where there was the promise of live folk music. The music was great--there was a middle-aged man who played the guitar and sang sad melodies in a raspy voice, as well as one of the best fiddlers that I have ever heard. But soon, the fun started. Kim, it became clear, was drunk out of her mind, as evidenced when she began crawling around on the floor with one of the customer's dogs, and attempted to steal a hat off of another customer. Ivan led us home pretty quickly after that, but unfortunately, by this time, both our hosts were too drunk to recognize the implications of the fact that we had to get up at 8:00 the next morning, and proceeded to put on an awful Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. Nora attempted to give them the hint by laying down on the floor and attempting to sleep, but (again) they were too drunk to notice. Kim fell asleep sitting up on the couch, and Ivan dozed just enough to look like he was sleeping, but not enough to allow the movie to be turned off (as Josh, bless his soul, tried to do more than once for our benefit). I soon dozed off too, but awoke to find myself being kicked off the couch by Kim, who, once I vacated, became convinced that the hood of the sweater I was wearing was her blanket, and quite determinedly tried to yank it off me. Finally, Josh managed to convince Ivan that Kim needed to be taken to bed, at which point he helped me to set up the couch/bed, and Nora and I finally got to sleep (at somewhere between 3 and 4 in the morning). I was only woken up once by Ivan exclaiming how brilliant Van Damme's dialogue was.

Pictures of Edinburgh here.

Next morning, we left on our Haggis bus tour, and went to Stirling, where we climbed up to the Wallace Monument and saw the Banoch Burn battlefield. From there, we went up to Loch Lubnaig, then to Glencoe, and ended up at the Isle of Skye at the end of the day, where we stayed in Saucy Mary's hostel (named after a Viking princess who used to flash her tits before a ferry crossing for good luck). The weather was horrendous, but the scenery was beautiful anyway, and we did get a few flashes of sun. Anyway, I'm kind of glad we got to see Scotland rough and wild, rather than sunny and idyllic.

My bed that night could not have been warmer or cozier, and it was up at 8:00 again the next morning. We headed north to the tip of the Isle, and as we passed the mountains our bus driver told us the legends behind their formations. We stopped to take a drink from a mountain stream said to heal every broken heart, and got soaked and muddy climbing over fences and "do not enter" signs to get to the ruins of an old MacDonald castle. On the way off the island, our driver collected £1 from each of us to buy whiskey and some Scottish shortbread, and a couple of our fellow tourists went stumbling down the bus pouring us each our share. A bit of whiskey and more than a few Michael Jackson songs later, we were at Loch Ness, which I think might have been more impressive if I wasn't so used to the size of Lake Michigan. That night, we went to a demonstration of traditional Highland life and dress, where we learned that Highlanders used to soak their clothes in pee to rid them of lice, and that because living conditions were so terrible, men came to view dying in battle as the best way to go (rather than gangreen, tuberculosis, etc.). I think the life expectancy was around 38 for men, and somewhere in the 40s for women.

Later, our guide convinced the owner of a nearby pub to play the bagpipes for us, after which it was my great joy to witness the large group of obnoxious Americans travelling with us attempt to make the instrument squeal. Much horrible kareoke followed.

Sunday morning, up at 8:00. We explored Loch Ness a bit more, and went tacky souvenir hunting, before driving down to Culloden, and the battlefield there. While most of the tour went into the historic exhibit there, Tony (our bus driver) told us the story of the battle, and I walked around the battlefield, where the graves of the fallen clansmen are marked with stones--even a stone for Clan Campbell, who fought on the English side. Afterwards, we went to an ancient graveyard of standing stones nearby (like Stonehenge, except free, and you can still dance naked around these ones if you want), and then to the Tipsy Laird for lunch, where most of the group (including Nora) tried Haggis. I didn't try it, and from what I've heard, I'm glad I didn't, because I probably would have thrown up.

After that, we pretty much just high-tailed it back to Edinburgh, since we were running late. We got back to the city just before 6:00, and said our sad goodbyes and exchanged a few names and numbers with fellow Londoners, before having a traditional Scottish dinner at Pizza Hut and chilling in a pub until we had to get to the station again, this time for a 9-hour overnight bus back to London.

Pictures of the Highlands here and here.

Now, normalcy (and classes) have resumed. I seem to have spent nearly all of my money on train tickets, so now I'm on rations of pasta and rice until I get my loan money, but it was worth it, I think. Toodles, and enjoy the pictures.