19 September 2017

Edinburrrrah

Day 8

The original plan was to get up at the crack of dawn and hike up Arthur's Seat; however, we slept late, and when the alarm rang at 4:30am, I was not having it and we decided to sleep til breakfast time.

I elevated my ankle on the edge of my bed, without leg support, and my knee felt like death in the morning. We started out at Edinburgh Castle and found a post office box to drop my postcards. These cards would proceed to get lost around the world; the first one took a month to get to the Netherlands, and the one to Canada took two months after being rerouted from Hungary, while the one to the United States arrived two months after travelling to the Philippines.







One of my friends had recommended going to Snax Cafe for cheap food, and haggis! We proceeded to order Scottish breakfast, and my plate included sausages, bacon, fried egg, black pudding, tattie scone, hash brown, haggis, sliced sausage, beans, a fried tomato, and a butter roll. Needless to say, I was completely stuffed. Haggis and black pudding were pretty inoffensive, considering I generally don't like eating lamb nor innards.

After breakfast, we headed up Calton Hill, where there was a beautiful view of the city. Jenn proceeded to scale a structure and friendly fellow tourists offered assistance on the ascend and descend. Despite not speaking the same language, the look of terror was widely understood.







We took a break to hydrate and Jenn even snuck in a quick nap inside Pret. We headed out towards Arthur's Seat.

I thought I could try to attempt the hike, but my ankle was all but screaming at me and we settled for walking the perimeter and going up smaller hills. The wind here was nothing to joke about, and it became hard to keep my eyes open at its strongest.






After making our way back into town, we paid a visit to Greyfriars Bobby before dinner. Jenn had been telling me about a cafe called Patisserie Valerie that she had been recommended to try all trip long, and we decided to finally visit one after many missed opportunities. Neither of us were particularly hungry, and we were doubly disappointed when the pastries and the service turned out to be severely lacking. We then ended up missing the closing time of our dinner place, and had to settle for Nando's, where we were lectured for seating ourselves. Whoops.





We ended up rushing our dinner, running back the hostel to grab our bags, and then rushing to the train station. Once we arrived, we realized the mistake as we were an hour early for our train. We had wanted to kill time in a local park, only to arrive inside and get kicked out not even five minutes later as the park closed at 7PM.

Our ride back was uneventful, and I passed out once we made it back to Manchester.

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