Edinburgh, Scotland, Sun 30 - Mon 31 Aug 09

Big sleep-in in the morning, still feeling like crap. Definitely had a full blown cold... damn! But I was determined to climb Arthur's Seat, I wasn't going to let a cold stop me from climbing one of the few hills I have come across in the last few months. So after a good sleep and a big breakfast we headed for the mountain at about midday. When I say mountain it really is just a big hill. According to Wikipedia it's about 20 meters higher than the Mount. So yeah not too tough of a climb but enough to get the heart pumping.

Arthur's seat is actually in the middle of the city too so it only took us about 15mins to walk to Holyrood Park at the base of it from our hostel. It doesn't have much vegetation like the Mount and it's front is dominated by the Salisbury Crags, a row of steep rock cliffs about half the height again of Arthur's Seat with tracks running along both the top and below the rock cliff.

It was mainly steps all the way to the top and then the odd bit of rock climbing before reaching the summit. The views were beautiful looking across Edinburgh. Sadly we couldn't stay up there very long as the wind was freezing. We made our way down another path where we found some blackberry bushes, yum! We had a lot of fun sourcing juicy blackberries and Nick even did the hard part of climbing up the bank amongst all the prickles to get the best ones.

We then walked the trail along the front of the Salisbury Crags which was a nice stroll to finish off our climb. I had a lot of fun, definitely miss my hiking.

We walked back up past Holyrood Palace which is the Queen's residence in Scotland (decided not to pay to go in) and wondered back up The Royal Mile, stopping for a late lunch along the way.

We decided we should see at least one festival show while we were here so we found ourselves a free comedy stand up at a local pub as part of the Fringe. I have to admit, it's harder than it seems to find a show to go to. There is almost too much choice, and it's difficult to wade through all of the listings just looking for one good show to go to. The standup was ok, not high quality but good enough for a bit of fun. The pub was really cool though with 4 stories down underground and lots of hidden rooms and dark spaces.

Monday was a pretty laxed day as I was feeling the worst I had over the whole weekend. We found a pub to chill in for a few hours and keep out of the cold. I didn't have the energy to do anymore sightseeing so we ended up taking an earlier train home so I could get back to my own bed. Unfortunately the train was delayed and packed!

By some miracle we both got seats even though the whole train was reserved, we managed to pick one of the few seats where the people didn't show up. Luck was on my side that day. I couldn't have handled a 5 hour journey standing up with a headache.

Besides getting sick I had a lot of fun in Edinburgh. It's a beautiful city with gorgeous buildings and a nice atmosphere. It's just a pity about the weather :)