Edinburgh

I barely slept last night. We went to bed really early, at like ten, so we could check out of our hostel and move onto Edinburgh in the morning. I was feeling a bit sick so I had a hard time falling asleep, then when I finally dozed off at around 2am, the parade of drunks began stumbling into our shared room. The first girl passed out on her bed fully clothed for a couple of minutes before stomping her way to the bathroom to puke very loudly for the next hour. So rude. Every half hour another one of them would crawl in, farting and mumbling to themselves, slamming the door and generally making as much noise as possible. In between ridiculous cartoonish snores the guy in the bunk above me (that's right, we were in bunk beds) would rant and rave very loudly in his sleep (in Russian). The room smelled like alcohol and butts. I finally fell asleep about 90 minutes before my alarm. Traveling is the worst.

Just kidding, it's actually the best. If you can have fun in a fart-filled hostel you can have fun anywhere.

After we got checked out, we walked a mile to the bus station and grabbed a coffee before leaving for Edinburgh. Man it is so awesome here! Almost every building is old and cool, there is a huge castle in the near distance and creepy cobbled alleyways that you are slightly terrified to walk down because it's obviously where everyone goes to get stabbed but then you walk down them anyway. (Don't worry Mom, we won't get stabbed, I promise.) We got lost three times walking to our hostel but I really didn't care because everywhere there is something to look at and I'm finding that getting lost is often more interesting than knowing where you are going. Okay let's be honest, I was running on 90 minutes of sleep, starving and carrying an insanely heavy pack (why did i pack so many shoes?!) so I was feeling like total shit, but Edinburgh is a great place to feel like shit in.

We finally made it to our hostel but were too early to check in so we went to the National Museum of Scotland where I went to the Catherine The Great exhibit. It was just ok, not worth 9 pounds, but interesting noneeless. I didn't get a chance to look around the general museum (which is huge by the way, like five stories) but it's free so I'll go back later this week. Finally got to check into the hostel and (thankfully) it is way better than the last. It smells a bit mildewy, but that's a big improvement over Eau de Drunk Hobo. We have a full kitchen and a private bathroom--it's like having our own apartment (I mean "flat" because I'm European now.)

After walking around town for awhile we've stopped at The Fiddler's Arms where we are about to have a pint and eat some haggis which will probably be disgusting (the haggis, not the pint) because how could haggis NOT be disgusting? Seriously, have you heard about this stuff? Go check out the wikipedia article and tell me why I am actually paying money to eat that.