Edinburgh

I arose this morning confident enough to sleep in a little and perhaps sneak in a couple extra minutes in the hot shower. The weather outside did not share my optimism and decided to pour rain, but still I dressed accordingly and confidently I checked myself out, and confidently still, walked the long walk to the bus stop made longer by the wind and rain. The bus was a little later than I expected but I got on and asked the bus driver to take me as close as he could to the Bus Station. He said that would be the Academy, and I said ok and bought my ticket. As the bus drove on I watched intently as the stops flashed overhead, waiting for my turn to get off. A while went by and there was no sign of the street name on my ticket. The street names on the overhead started to get unfamiliar to me, but then again I am new here, so we drove on. We began driving out of the city, and I was a little concerned but I figured we must be going in a huge circle and my stop might be the one right at the end (after all it is by the bus station). When we started driving through the suburbs I knew something was wrong. I know I had wanted to get out of the city and see the country side, but not like this! Before long I was the only one left on the bus and the bus driver pulled the bus to the side and shut off the engine. Obviously the bus driver had thought everyone had gotten off and was startled to find that I was very much still there. Confused, and tired from sitting so long trying to figure out where I was, I asked him "Is the Academy coming up at any point soon?" The bus driver looked at me with a blank look on his face and said, "We passed that about an hour ago." I had to squeeze my fists together to keep right then from flying off the handle. I was lost in the middle of freaking no where, most likely several miles from anywhere remotely familiar, and it was pouring rain outside. With as much civility as I could conjure up I asked him how I could get back to the bus station. He shot me a look and snickered for a moment, which I did not much appreciate, and then told me that I had two choices. I could either sit here in the bus for 20 minutes while he went on break, or there might be another bus coming in around 8 minutes to the bus stop down the road. Well God knows what I would have done had I stayed in this bus another minute, so I decided to take option 2 and walk to the bus stop and wait in the rain for a "supposed" bus to arrive. Fortunately, the bus showed up only about 10 minutes later and this driver made sure I got off on the right stop. I finally made it to the bus station several hours later than I had expected, but I was still able to catch another bus heading to edinburgh.

Edinburgh is by far the most beautiful city I've ever seen in my life. It's like something out of a little kid's fairytale fantasy. There are castles and keeps all over the place, and a long connecting bridge where underneath the ground just gets lost in the fog. Inside the main city, each building looks like its 700 years old, and the streets are like the pages of storybooks where knights might tread through at any moment. When walking through them I could not help but smile, and I couldn't stop smiling. The whole city winds upwards towards Edinburgh Castle like Minus Tirith, and at the top you can look over the whole city. I found a great hostel here with free wifi internet, and in fact when I was walking around I noticed that most of the cafes here have free wifi. Unfortunately however, I can only stay here in the hostel for tonight because they're completely booked tomorrow night. So I have to find somewhere else to go tomorrow night, but I can probably come back the next night if I want to. After I got settled in the hostel I went to find some food. I was starving because all I'd had to eat all day was a blueberry muffin I bought at the bus station. I decided to treat myself and actually find a somewhat nice resturant where I could get a full meal, so I walked into a resturant called Garfunkles and ordered Cottage Pie, which was similar to some kind of mince meat pie. I ordered it mostly because It seemed as much like Scottish quizene as I could figure. It felt so good going down. I felt like I hadn't eaten in weeks, and it was wonderfully warm inside the resturant. It had definately been several days since I'd been warm with a full stomach. I was so full afterwards I felt tipsy as I sauntered my way back to the hostel. Tomorrow Ryan's coming up from London to spend the weekend with me in Scotland. I'm thinking that when he gets here I'll take him around the city for a while but I think since I don't really have a place for that night, maybe we should just catch a bus up to Stirling and stay the night there and come back in the morning. We'll see what we decide to do when he gets here, but It'll be nice to see a familiar face I'm sure.