Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Foray into the land of Coos and Haggis

Okay, it has been quite some time since I did anything of any consequence, until this past week. On Wednesday, November 4th, I had the chance to fly to SCOTLAND! Yes, it's really cool. I had the most amazing three days exploring Edinburgh and the Scottish countryside! But let's start at the beginning, so as to impart the full fabulosity of my trip!

Day 1- I woke up relatively early to catch the train with my travel buddy, Jade. We took the train to Memmingen, where there is a small airport. We made good time, and got to the terminal early. The plane was uneventful, and flight attendants were selling stuff to us the whole time. Snacks, booze, and scratch lottery tickets, just to mention a few products offered by a pre-recorded voice over the intercom. It was lovely. We arrived in Edinburgh in the afternoon, and made our way to our hostel, St Christopher's of Edinburgh. Our room was great, as I decided to book and all-girls room with a private bathroom for a few extra pounds.


View from our room in St Christopher's

So we dropped off our stuff and went to wander the Royal Mile, which happened to be a two-minute walk from the hostel. We found a small fish 'n chips shop and obligingly partook of the national food of the UK while looking at tourist-y shops and kilted shop-lads. We also booked a tour of the Scottish countryside and Loch Ness for the next day. After finishing our dinner, we headed back to St. Cristopher's for a good night's sleep.

Day 2-We awoke very early to get a jump start on our day. After free breakfast offered by the hostel, we headed out to meet with our tour group. At eight o'clock sharp, we departed in a 30 passenger van for Loch Ness. Our guide was a born and raised Scot, and was very knowledgeable about the country's history and interesting lore.
As we sped at alarming speeds down the "wrong" side of the road, and after my life had flashed in front of my eyes at least three times, we came to our first official stop to see a Heeland Coo, better known as a shaggy/hairy cow. It was so cool! It looked like a big shaggy dog with huge horns and hooves.


Hamish

It was awesome! Despite our best efforts, Hamish (that was this coo's name) decided to stay in his little shack and now come out for some delicious coo food that we were waving at him from the fence. Oh well. Moving on, we drove past several interesting sights, including the castle where Monty Python was filmed,


THE castle!

the highest peak in the UK, and many Lochs.
Finally we reached Loch Ness, where we ate lunch and went on a boat tour, trying to spot Nessie.


Loch ness

The boat captain told us that if we were to capture irrefutable proof of the existence of a creature in Loch Ness, we were entitled to 1 Million pounds from the British government. Needless to say, Jade and I had our eyes peeled! But alas, we didn't spot any monsters this trip.


Or did we...

On the way home, because of the sun going down so early, the whole group got to watch Braveheart on a small monitor in the van. After a 12 hour day, Jade and I went straight to bed when we got back.

Day 3-On Friday we decided to get up early to catch a bus out to Roslin to see the Rosslyn Chapel that has recently gained world fame from it's role in the Davinci Code. We got to sit at the top f a double decker bus all the way out to the tiny village of Roslin, and see a very intricately beautiful cathedral under piles of scaffolding and restoration debris. It was a little disappointing, but still a sight worth seeing in the end. Upon arriving back in Edinburgh, we headed up to the Royal Mile to explore a little more before meeting up with the free tour offered by the New City Tours company. This company is by far the best deal, and having taken a tour by the same group in Munich, knew it was going to be well worth the time. The tour was three and a half hours long, and covered all the major sights in the city. Our tour guide was amazing and energetic and had a lot of knowledge not only on the history of Edinburgh, but also of the more recent contributions the city has made, including the fact that the first few Harry Potters were written there.


Our funny tour guide

It was fantastic, and we enjoyed every minute of it! We tipped the tour guide heavily at the end, and in exchange he gave us a 25% off coupon for a restaurant on the Royal Mile where we could get some authentic Haggis.


Haggis...Yum!

We obligingly walked to the restaurant and ordered the Scottish specialty, which was surprisingly really good! We ate more of it that the nachos we ordered to supplement our meal. We ended the night by purchasing kilts (mine was an apron that was made to look like a kilt, so I cheated) and other novelties, then headed off to bed.

Day 4-This was our last morning in the city, so we made the most of it, beginning by hiking up to Edinburgh Castle and taking in the panoramic view of the city it offered. After taking a ton of pictures there, we went to the Tartan shop and had a tutorial on medieval swords. It was entertaining to see how enthusiastic our barely-out-of-his-teens sword master described his practice sessions in the city park with his battle-reenacting buddies. After that we needed to head up to the airport , so we said goodbye to our beloved Scotland and flew back to Germany. The end!
Pictures to come soon!