It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Haggis!

J Yesterday we arrived in Edinburgh Scotland, it rained most of the day and we chose to see the castle immediately. Which, in hindsight, was a bad idea. They cancelled the guided tours because of the rain, which for the UK was pretty sad, esp. since it was a light drizzle that dried up an hour after it began. The castle was really cool though, and we spluged on audio guides so we had some idea of what we were looking at. Basically the low down is that there were many, many sieges on the castle, Scotland and England traded ownership of it over the centuries, and many many men died in its shadow. Also, dogs. Interesting enough there is a dog cemetery within the walls of Edinburgh Castle.

We spent the rest of our evening in search of a cheap meal and we found it.. in a mall. It gets worse, we headed there to use the loo (and I'm proud to say I haven't paid for a bathrooom yet). After relieving ourselves we decided we were both starving and we couldn't afford to wonder around the medievel city any longer without sustinence. As the mall was closing in a mere 20 minutes and the security guards were moving in fast, we had a choce to make, fish and chips (again) or McDonalds. Yep, we chose the golden arcs. Mind you the menu was pretty different from what we were expecting, and they pimply 15 year old that took my order had no idea what I meant when I asked for "iced tea".

We wondered the dark streets back to our hostel and cuddled up on a couch for a relaxing evening. We watched Nepoleon Dynamite. Amazingly we enjoyed ourselves, probably because we expected nothing from the movie, having seen it already. For some strange reason though we noticed things we haden't before and found a lot of humor in the one day cult classic. We retired to our 16 bed dorm-room and attempted to get some sleep. Tomorrow, I'll be shopping for another pair of ear plugs (lost mine) and a second eye-shade. With 16 people in one room, and people going to bed as late as 2 and getting up as early as 6:30.. you can imagine that sleeping was quite a chore.

M This morning we got a bit of culture while we wandered through the National Scottish museum. It is HUGE! We didn't even see it all when we became a little museumed out. Our feet sore and tummy's grumbling. We went to the supermarket and were able to enjoy lunch outside in a park as it was SUNNY. Yes can you believe it sunny.

Edinburgh has catacombs beneath the city, so we went on a tour of them this afternoon. They have scary ghost tours, but I didn't want that, so we just took the normal ones. It was very interesting.

Then with sore feet we decided to be a little crazy and do a hike up to Aurther's Seat, the highest point overlooking Edinburgh. After following a path which we thought was it and going up up up, the path started to come down down down. At the bottom of that we saw what we are pretty sure was the way up, and a short flat path back to the road where we were before going up up up. We both took one look and decided forget it. We when up another smaller, but still big with beautiful views hill for a few pictures. We then walked back to the grocery store to buy some food. By the time we reached the hostel we were exausted. We ate our dinner then went back to the movie room and watched "About a Boy".

We are now typing this listening to a large group of crazy Scottish "football" aka soccer fans chanting and yelling outside. We assume they are at a nearby pub. There is no Rugby on tonight so they must be football fans. We've been told there is an under 25 game on.

Good night from Edinburgh! (Not sure if we will sleep with these crazy soccer fans) :)