Do it...and let the English see you do it (May 13th)

I woke up 10 minutes before I was supposed to go on my tour of Edinburgh from a dream where I woke up 1o minutes before I was supposed to go on my tour of Edinburgh. Luckily, the tour meeting point was at the Starbucks a half block up the hill from where Kaylie and Sam live, so I made it in time.

This would be my last New Europe tour, as Scott and I had been to every city where they were offered, having only missing London because we didn't know about them yet. So I was hoping to end it on a good note by having a fantastic tour guide. When I got to the meeting point, there were quite a few people, so they split people up into two groups. One tour guide was lead by a guy who looked eerily like Legolas, though not NEARLY as attractive as that hunk, Orlando Bloom. And the other was lead by a very enthusiastic American girl from Chicago named Gaja (pronounced guy-ah) who was conducting her third ever tour.

Well I chose Gaja simply because she was the closer of the two. We began the tour and instantly I regretted my decision. She was the type of person who couldn't stop performing for the crowd and trying to make everyone laugh even though she wasn't remotely funny. Don't you hate that? PLACES!

We saw quite a few cool things on the tour: Edinburgh Castle, which sits on an inactive volcano, the sites of many witch burnings, and the coffee shop where JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book, overlooking the original "Hogwarts." Lots of really cool places to see.

I had borrowed Sam's camera so I could resume taking pictures of my travels, but only a handful of pictures turned out...something having to do with the shutter was causing all of the pictures to turn out WAY too bright. I did manage to get a few pictures along the way, but it looks like I'm somewhat cursed when it comes to cameras nowadays.

The tour ended right near a huge green space called St. Princes greens. It's basically two huge hills with a path going right between them where most Edinburgh-ers or ens come whenever it gets sunny out. The grass is pristine and is cut just like a putting green. The sun had just come out and warmed me up, so I decided to head to the hill where I eventually took a little snoozer. Gosh, I LOVE being on vacation.

I went back to Kaylie's flat and then her, Sam and I went out to eat and then had a few pints at various pubs. They had house beers at one of the pubs, though it was chilled to below room temperature so it was much better than the stuff Scott and I had in London.

The last pub we went to had a Scottish folk singer performing, which was really cool because most everyone in the pub claps along with the song and get really into it. Reminded me a lot of an Irish pub, but DEFINITELY not Mickey's or Paddy's...those are NOT Irish pubs.

After the pubs, the three of us went back to the flat and had a discussion about politics and religion and patriotism, etc. Kaylie and I both agreed that it was the first time we had ever had this type of discussion without a Duffy in the room. Though it was a DISCUSSION, not an ARGUMENT, so maybe it was different then the typical Duffy-incited conversation:)

My first day in Scotland was pretty darn good. I also think I neglected to mention that Kaylie's boyfriend is British, which makes the title of this blog a little more poignant I think.