Edinburgh Weekend

What a weekend!
We went to Edinburgh this weekend for 4 days, it was a long 4 days but it was really great!  We left and took the train at 8 on Friday morning.  Once we got there in mid afternoon we checked in the hotel then started our day!  The hotel was much nicer than we expected!
After the hotel we did an open bus tour of the city.  It was so cold out but we stayed outside so we could get good pictures.  For being such a small city it was a pretty long tour! We were freezing by the end of the tour, even with gloves, scarves, hats etc on! This tour was good because we started to figure out where things were, we caught onto the city pretty quickly.  After the bus tour we were starving so dinner time!  We found this all you can eat chinese buffet and it looked good!  We pretty much ate the entire restaurant!  It was really good food!  After that we went back to the hotel for a quick rest and then went exploring more.  We ended up at this pub which was really cool and historic looking.

Saturday, we had most of the day to ourselves but in the morning we went on a tour of Edinburg Castle.  After that we decided to grab a quick lunch at this cute restaurant.  They ended up being a big whisky place but we just needed lunch.  The man that ran the restaurant was so nice and told us some cool things to do while we were here.  After that we made a quick stop into the Museum of Childhood which was cute, it was small so we went through it in like 30 minutes.  Then the fun began, we hiked up Arthurs Seat...to the very top!   It was not a path to the top, we hiked up rocks, some rock steps which were difficult to climb on, and more rocky paths.  To the tip top, it took about 3 hours.  I was prepared and had a water bottle and digestives ( chocolate biscuits ) in my bag!  My mom taught me well!   Once we got to the top it was the most beautiful view.  Once we caught our breath and sat down for a few we just walked around looking at all the city!  We got a lot of cool pictures!
After taking our time up there, we climbed down!  That was a tiring hike!  That evening we went to this bar called the barking dog, or something like that.  It was a bar that brewed their own beer.  It was gross stuff, dark and all tasted bad!  We got to try some of them to find the one we liked the best, but none of them were good!  As I was in there I was thinking, my dad would love this place! The guys in our group loved it and got angry when all the girls wanted to leave because we were tired of smelling the beer!
Sunday, we went on a Highlands tour all day.  This tour was a nice bus and the bus driver talked the entire 2 hour drive to the first stop which was a loch.  He told us what we were passing and history of Scotland.  I only fell asleep for a little bit of it so I got some of the information.
Our first stop was a Loch where it was really pretty because the sun was still rising so it was really nice!  The second stop was a small town where we had lunch.  It was all in the highlands so everywhere was not too crowded with people and everyone was very nice.  The third stop was the castle where Monty Python was filmed!  It was cool to see it!  The last stop on this long day was the Sterling Castle.  It was really pretty but by this time we had seen a lot of castles and did not spend too long there!  We came back and then went to the oldest pub in Scotland!  It had live music and was really historic!
The next morning, Monday, we had nothing planned expect to be at the train station at 5 to leave.  We got to sleep in some and then we went out exploring!  We went along streets we had seen all weekend and had not gotten the chance to stop at.  We also had lunch at the Elephant House which is where JK Rowling started her first Harry Potter book!  It was a really cool place and the bathroom was covered with people writing notes to JK Rowling or just about Harry Potter!
We finally got back to London at about 10:30 pm, which we then had to wake up for class at 8 the next day!
Yesterday I had 2 classes and we did a cool outing for one of them.  For culture by design we went to the Brand Museum which has every decade and important things from that decade it then has the development of products through time.  So it had the Johnson's baby powder bottle from its first one made to how it developed to now.  It was really cool to see how it changed!
Last night, Tuesday, I went to a West Ham game with Lee and his dad!  It was a really fun game!  They drew ( tied) 1-1 but it was really fun!
Been a busy past few days!! I am going to Liverpool this weekend!
It is starting to get to be nicer weather here!

Tonight we are seeing a play for theater called A man and two governors.  It is supposed to be really good!  We all had to read the play so it should be cool to see how they compare!