Edinburgh: kilts, beautiful mountains, and happy ukulele playing frenchmen :)

The train rides to and from Scotland were the only parts of Scotland that weren't amazingly wonderful. Friday morning, our 4 hr long early morning train ride to Edinburgh was tainted by a flock of obnoxiously loud cackling middle aged women who got on the wrong train and were constantly laughing like banshees for no reason while we were all trying to sleep. I had a fun project over the weekend where i decided I would photograph everyone i found in a kilt. Unfortunately, for some reason, most of the people walking around wearing kilts happen to be creepy old men or little boys..just in case you ever wondered. Lindsay, Hannah, Sara & I got the best room by far in the B&B- we had our own big comfortable beds, the room was huge and fancily decorated, and had a fireplace, new flatscreen tv, and a beautiful piano.! It was crazily out of tune though so everything I played sounded super sinister and great. :) 10 of us went to get lunch at a pub- it was short staffed so we were rushed, but I got some delicious soup and bread. We had to hurry to make our double decker bus tour of edinburgh..I'm kind of over those bustours and droning audioguides..It was nice to ride around in the open air, but got chilly near the end of the tour. After a powernap, a bunch of us went and got some DELICIOUS thai food.! A lot of us were crowded around the table in the corner, right in fronta the kitchen door so it was awkward..Sara didn't buy any food and one of the waiters caught her awkwardly eating someone's garnish..and it was hilarious. Hannah, Sara & I walked around for a long time that night, checking out different places. We made friends with two local teenagers chillin on a bench- Ryan & Ryan. They were funny, so we got pictures with them. We went to a place called Vodka Revolution that girls from the hostel in Ireland told us to go to- I got a chocolate toffee shot- soooo good.! We considered going to a jazz club but it was expensive to get in, and we just kept walking around places..We met some people from Manchester and talked for awhile- one of them was about to get married, and for some reason Sara started talking to his fiancee on his phone. The creepy guy in the group wouldn't leave Hannah alone, so we walked to another bar. I laughed at some guy dancing all goofily and so we started talking, and turns out he was from Australia, so we talked a lot about Australia..another creepy guy, this time in a snowflaked sweater, made a beeline for Hannah..so we left..Sara kept stopping to talk to people and we lost her O_o. Saturday morning, we all toured Edinburgh Castle, which was pretty neat. Then, Hannah, Sara & I went to the Elephant House- an elephant themed cafe where J.K. Rowling allegedly wrote some of Harry Potter. I decided, seeing that lovely picturesque view of the castle right out the window, and everything in London that we've seen- she's really not very creative. overrated. hah. I drew a picture of an elephant wearing a scottish hat on a napkin and added it to a board with a bunch of drawings. Then we went to hike up Arthur's seat- so intense but beautiful and so GREEN and huge beautiful rolling hills, mountains, cliffs.! We were sitting at the edge of a cliff when Hannah noticed some bird poop, so she promptly stuck her hand in it- it was so funny I almost fell off the mountain laughing and trying to lean back and take pictures of her freaking out. I had to put her hat & coat on her because she didn't want to touch things with her poo hand. After an hour or so we found the trail to the peak and realized that we could've done a lot less climbing to get to that point. Oh well, it was pretty and we were in no rush. It was really intense hiking up hundreds of stone steps and then basically low-grade rock climbing up to the very top- I got way ahead of Hannah & Sara because I powered up the steps and didn't stop at all. There was a bunch of drunk obnoxious Scotsmen chilling up there- I haven't the faintest idea how they got all that beer up there or how they made it back down the mountain without killing themselves. Sara was talking to two of the more obnoxious ones, and when I walked over they were yelling at me like "Quick! Who does he look like?!" Sara was saying he looked like Willem Dafoe in spiderman- but without the mask, so even scarier. He got mad at that but he really did look just like him..we were waiting for him to hop on his goblin rocket off of the mountain. We told a Canadian guy that story and he said "No wonder he's mad, that's not a very nice thing to say" we said "but doesn't he look just like him?" and he said "I didn't say I disagreed" haha.! We also met a nice french guy there that had a ukulele and kept singing "The Bear Necessities" in french and dancing around. :) After we made it down the mountain, we stopped and got some pizza and took a 20 minute "nap" because we were super exhausted but that's all we had time for. Then, Lindsay, Alex, Kat, Hannah, Sara & I went on a walking ghost tour called City of the Dead. Our tour guide was excellent- she mainly told us historical torture stories and ghost stories too whilst walking around the greyfriar graveyard- about the supposed Mackenzie poltergeist "the best documented supernatural case in history". The tour guide got all of us to stand in the Black Mausoleum, where all this paranormal activity supposedly happens, in the complete dark as she told us about it. At the very end a guy jumped out at us and everyone else was being all jumpy, but I guess we didn't pay enough money for the tour to experience a real poltergeist. The real history of the place is pretty freaky though- standing in a spot where 1200 prisoners of war were locked facedown and starved for 5 months during the Scottish winter; only 100 survived that ordeal, and then they were mercilessly massacred anyways. O_o After the tour, Hannah, Sara & I went back to vodka revolution, then spent a long time trying to find a certain club with a light up dance floor..finally found it and we decided the steep cover charge wasn't worth it. Hannah went back to the B&B and Sara and I went to a "legendary pub" called Sneaky Pete's..it was no kind of good so we left right after and then ran into these goth guys who told us somewhere else to go. That place was okay, we met interesting people from Italy, Germany, Spain, Morocco & Edinburgh and had a fun time hanging out. After we checked out of the B&B sunday, we had brunch back at the elephant house- got a delicious gingerbread latte.! Then Sara and I browsed around some touristy shops then briefly went to the National Museum of Scotland. It was interesting, but we weren't really in museum-mode, and only had a few hours left to spend in Scotland, so we left pretty quickly. Walking down the sidewalk, we randomly ran into the ukulele playing french guy from the day before- that we met at the top of Arthur's seat! His name's Etienne! He said he was actually headed to the museum but since it was such a nice day he said he'd take us to this place called the Meadow. It was such a beautiful, spacious, green park and such a wonderful, amazing, fun afternoon & shared moment in time. We just hung out in the park for a long time, and he played the ukulele and sang in french and english and had a great time. It was all just so perfect and real and definitely my favorite experience in Europe. At one point, Sara took his ukulele and walked over to the walking path to sing for money- Etienne told me she sounded like someone being tortured with a hook and their intestines being pulled out hahahaa. I think she was scaring people- then Etienne yelled "Sara! Sara! it's time to take you back to the hospital!" :) All too soon, we had to get back on the train to return to London..fun ride with obnoxiously drunk screaming frat guys O_o. We got back to london at 11 PM last night..I had to write an 1800 word essay on UK politics and media that I'd only written 300 words for..due at 9 am..then for my theater class I had an essay that I'd luckily done before this weekend, but I had to give a 15 minute analytical presentation on a different play too. Good thing I'm naturally an insomniac.