Weekend trip to Edinburgh

In all my "I'm leaving in two weeks and therefore must begin to freak out" mode, I forgot to mention the weekend trip I took to Edinburgh last weekend! I was actually pretty shocked that Genevieve and I managed to pull it off—we booked tickets and hostels at the last minute, and Genevieve is usually gone during the weekend to see her boyfriend in London. I'm usually sleeping in my room or wandering around York. So the fact that we got our shit together to make it up there was pretty impressive.

We left Saturday morning, which is the only way to do it. The most important thing I have learned about public transportation in England is this: don't try to travel on a Friday afternoon/night or a Sunday afternoon/night. Trains are CRAMMED with people, and I don't mean every seat full—I mean people standing in the vestibules and aisles (most of the time at least half of the aisle is taken up by bodies). We weren't expecting much as the train trip to London is pretty boring (green field, green field, flowers), but WOW. The trip to Scotland is AMAZING. About halfway through, we saw a big blue expanse, which Genevieve realized first was the ocean. It had been so long since we had seen the ocean that we barely recognized it!

Of course, in England when there are oceans, there are also adorable little coastal towns. The one to top them all was right at the border between England and Scotland: Berwick-Upon-Tweed. I got out my guidebook (feeling quite touristy) and found out it was the part of the UK that had changed hands between Scotland and England the most times: a grand total of 13. No wonder! Even though it was foggy and cloudy, it had a huge river running into the center and an old arched bridge.

I didn't know it, but its beauty foreshadowed the things to come.

The streets of Edinburgh were so pretty. They reminded Genevieve and I of a larger York: still cobbled and old feeling, but a lot bigger and longer. It was lined with kitschy souvenir shops, even more than York. The main street (called the Royal Mile) had more restaurants than I had seen together in any city. Because Genevieve's friend David was coming the next day, we knew he wouldn't want to shop and ratted around vintage stores for the afternoon. We then took our obligatory afternoon siesta at the Starbucks and people-watched outside of the second floor window.

For some unknown reason, "outside the Starbucks" is the main hangout for the emo kids in Edinburgh (think My Chemical Romance, not Dashboard Confefssional), so most of our time was spent on the kids with long black hair falling into their eyes and skinny jeans so tight we wondered how they wriggled into them every morning. We made up a love triangle with two boys and a girl in the group and Genevieve developed a little crush on one of the boys, who she would have hit on, she said, if he wasn't 15 years old. It was great fun.

We ate dinner that day at Wannaburger, which (we didn't know it) was basically American. The milkshakes there were actual MILKSHAKES. For some reason, milkshakes in England are flavored milk—it's DISGUSTING. These had icecream in them, which brought us close to tears. And the burgers were also incredibly delicious. We weren't sure whether this was because they were actually that tasty or that the ones in England taste so sucky.

That night, we went out, but didn't have much luck. The first place was a fun little bar with live music, but it was small, hot and mostly made up of 30- and 40-year-olds. A very, very drunk Scottish guy tried to talk to us, but we had no idea what he was saying, partly because of his slurring and partly because of his accent. The next place we went (Finnegan's Wake—so we were in Scotland but at an Irish place... what?) This had a younger crowd, but one of the patrons was this creepy guy in a grey-striped sweater who instead of, I don't know, TALKING to Genevieve, pretended like he was trying to get by her by putting his hand on her back and pushing slightly. At first we just thought, "OK, he needs to get somewhere," but then he did it multiple times and even once when we were standing in the corner. There was NO WHERE TO GO. He just looked sort of confused and went back the way he came. We left. At our third bar, a nice Australian guy with bad teeth kind of fell down upon us and kept talking and talking. We excused ourselves and went back to the hostel, discouraged.

The next day, David came and took us to the Last Drop Inn, where they hung people. Next it was off to the Greyfriar's Bobby statue, a monument to the terrier this guy owned and when he died, Bobby came and slept at his grave every night for 14 years until he died. It was adorable and the statue looked like my old dog, a Cairn terrier named Hamish.

We walked to the castle on the hill, but it was £11 ($22). No freaking way. So we looked at it from the outside, then hiked in the parks around the castle. Walking up Princes St., David saw the sea (which looked incredibly far away) and decided he wanted to go there. We kept getting lost and every Scottish person that we asked (including this red-haired lady with a little red-haired kid) told us it was way too far and we should give up. After about 45 minutes, a riverside walk and a Royal Botanical Garden later, we made it (I couldn't quite believe it).

We sat on a stone wall and watched the water and talked for a little bit, then walked down a mile-long pier there. Of course, being so far outside of the city center, there were no other tourists, just fisherman who lived nearby who watched us with great amusement. It didn't help that I had a bag emblazoned with THE SCOTTISH EXPERIENCE and the Scottish flag on it (I turned it inside out). We got to a fishing shack where I guess they scored their gear and one of the old, crusty men jumped out at us, making me shriek, then burst into laughter as we all went a little red in the face.

At the end of the pier, we found 13-year-olds who were hiding from the adults and smoking. When they found out we came from California, they were so pleased. Their accents too were basically impossible to understand, but I managed to get that they were talking about how the man down the pier "gave us a fright." Love little phrases like that.

The next day, we walked to Arthur's Seat, a huge hill near the city. Originally it was just to see it, but David convinced us to walk halfway up. I got a little scared of the height, but not so for a little boy climbing with us who sat on the very edge and dangled his legs down the side of the 500-foot drop. Nerve-wracking to say the least.

We finished the visit with lunch at Elephant House, the cafe where J.K. Rowling wrote "Harry Potter." She used to buy one cup of coffee and make it last as long as possible because she couldn't afford another. Now she is richer than the Queen. Craziness! I spent the ride home on the train looping "Here Comes the Sun" on my iPod as it was sunny outside and I don't think I will ever take sun for granted again.