I'm a bit behind my blog! Whoops :) Oh well better try and catch up. We took the train up for the long weekend to Edinburgh. I decided we'd go by train because even though it's a bit longer I thought it would be less hassle, haha yeah right. The train network in the UK needs a serious overhaul. No seat allocation even though we paid a silly amount for the tickets, delayed and overcrowded trains. I think the UK could take some advice from the French, their train system was awesome.
So anyway, August is the Edinburgh Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. A month long event of theatre shows, plays, dance performances, comedy shows etc. They also have the Military Tatoo on and lots of street performers and the like. We spent Friday night wondering around this madness, checking out the main street (The Royal Mile) watching the street performances and dodging the pamphlet pushers (there were a lot of them!). We had dinner in a nice japanese restaurant and did our best to stay warm in the freezing Scotland weather. Seriously, considering it was the height of summer, I could not believe how cold it was! I ended up getting sick thanks to the freezing wind. Only in the UK can you get a cold during summer! :)
We went and saw Edinburgh Castle on the Saturday. We had to queue for ages to get in so we ended up spending most of the day there. Edinburgh Castle is up on a hill at the top of the Royal Mile and the wind picks up off the Forth of Firth and blows a freezing gale across the castle grounds. The castle was fun, lots to see. We timed it really well and caught a free tour from the castle gates. It was great to hear some of the stories about the place.
At 1pm they fire a big canon from the castle grounds which was a lot of fun to watch. It gave me a huge fright when it went off even though I was expecting it! We had a look through the old Prison rooms which have been re-created so you can see what it would have been like to be a Prisoner of War there. We also saw the Crown Jewels (not as impressive as the British ones at Windsor). There was the Palace Quarters where Queen Mary of Scots was born and another room had a large memorial to the thousands of soldiers killed in WW1 and other battles. And of course we spent a bit of time just admiring the view across all of Edinburgh.
In the late afternoon we went on a mission to find a building we had seen from the castle. It was very old and black with age, in fact it was more of a monument really. We found it next to the gardens near the train station and tried to chill there in the sun but it was too damn cold in the wind so we kept moving.
We walked along Princes St, the main shopping area and kept going till we reached Carlton Hill. On the way we found an old graveyard full of beautiful tombs and monuments from the 18th century. Once we got to Carlton Hill we walked up to the summit to enjoy the view over to Arthur's seat (Edinburgh's mini mountain) and the Old Town of Edinburgh, including the view back over the castle. Man how I had missed hills! London is way too flat. I love the challenge hills bring to walks and the views always make it worthwhile.
Carlton Hill had a nice collection of monuments on top too. One was this collection of huge pillars that Nick managed to climb up on (I was too short and couldn't make it up). We chilled up on the hill for ages and found a nice spot near the edge to enjoy the views.We'd had a pretty full on day so we headed back to the hostel. Unfortunately within half an hour of being back and relaxing at the hostel I started feeling terrible. My throat was dry & sore, I had a hazy headache and my body was aching. I knew for sure I had caught a cold. I couldn't believe how fast in happened. Damn this weather! I had absolutely no energy to leave the hostel so gave up on the idea of a night out whiskey tasting and instead got Vietnamese takeout (they had Pho, which is the tastiest dish ever and perfect for killing all sorts of nasty bugs - lots of garlic and chilli!).
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