Scotland Part 5

EDINBURGH.

The big city!

The first two nights we were here, we stayed with Liz Manson, the sweetest woman you'll ever meet who was kind enough to let us stay with her for a couple nights. We had such a lovely time with her and her friend Jackie.

And I'm not usually a dog person, but this was 

THE. CUTEST. DOG.

The next day we did more exploring.

I sent many letters to this "Spylaw Road" so it was nice to finally see where it was located!

Because of all the walking we'd been doing, my sandals were wearing thin and I didn't want to ruin them, so I bought some new shoes and had to take a sit to slip them on. That face was probably a good indication of how my face would look after I tried to break in a new pair of flats in a big city filled with miles of walking...

Sometimes my choice of footwear is just plain dumb.

(Referring back to the post where I wore sandals on a treacherous hike).

The most exciting part of this day was not the fact that it was our 3rd anniversary, or that Jake got roped into helping with a (lame) street show.

But was most definitely the part where I got pooped on by a seagull! (Joking, obviously.)

I've probably only ever been this disgusted a handful of times in my life, especially due to the fact that it had plastered itself all over my hair! Gross.

A woman in the bathroom informed me that it was good luck though, so I'll take it.

I changed my shirt and got my picture taken by a weird guy dressed like a giant snail. (I guess we missed the memo...?)

We visited Harry Potter's birthplace

and saw lots of interesting people performing on the streets
(There was a big festival going on called the Fringe Festival and it's basically a big arts festival that fills the Royal Mile)

 

That night, to celebrate our anniversary, we went to the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, which is a big performance, held in the grounds of the Edinburgh castle. There was lots of music and dancing and it was quite spectacular!

 That night walking back to our friends house, we saw some of the street performances still going on (it was at least 10:00 pm by this point) and one of them really caught our eye. We saw a big group of people gathering around what looked like a group of men wrestling. It turned out that it was a group of men wrestling, but they were wrestling one drunk man in particular, trying to hold him down until the cops could get there.

That's when I realized we weren't in Kansas anymore...

Oh, and when we found out that the little blue building below is a well known whore house that the cops just turn their heads to... It's called a "Salon" and everyone knows that's what it is.

The next day we ventured out with our friend Trisha who has come to visit us in the US a number of times. We also hung out a little with her twin sister Patrice who has also come to visit.

We love the Telfer twins! Thank you so much for letting us stay with you!!

 Anyone hungry?

 At the Edinburgh castle

 

 At this point, I was laughing pretty hard, because first of all, Jake wanted me to take a picture of him hanging out of this canon... well apparently there's only one right way to do it, and I kept doing it wrong. So we took picture after picture, trying to get the perfect one (I still don't know what that is...) and a woman came over and asked us to stop climbing on the canon and pointed out a sign, saying "I was just going to turn my head toward you, but then you just kept getting in there!! No climbing on the canon!" ha ha! Oops.

 That night, we made possibly the  

dumbest 

decision we have ever made.

Ready?

We took a Megabus from Edinburgh to London...

8 hours, overnight, isle seats by random strangers, no leg room, and NO SLEEP!

This was that morning after being crammed 

on this bus for the last 8 hours. 

We were pretty ready to be done...

 To hear about the London part of our trip, click here!