One thing I loved about Edinburgh were the buskers (street musicians). There were a lot more of them in Edinburgh, and they were certainly the most talented there. There were a ton of bagpipe players in kilts (although there were many buskers playing other instruments as well) and they were really awesome. This guy in particular was really good. People kept going up to take pictures with him while he was playing.
Then there was one of those living statue street performers. He wasn't cool though. Just creepy.
Then we went to Edinburgh Castle itself, which was amazing. It was so huge, and there was a ton to see inside.
The main gate.
Through a peep whole in the wall.
A miniature of the castle.
The Naval War Memorial
Pet cemetery for officers' dogs.
There were a few museums and stuff inside the castle too.
They had an example helmet/chainmail neck piece. Of course I had to try it on.
So the castle pretty much took all day, but it was totally amazing and totally worth it. Then we wondered around for a while trying to find some place to eat.
After a while we gave up because we couldn't find anything, and started heading back to the other side of the city where Doctors is, because we knew that was good and not too expensive. About a block away however, we found Greyfriar Bobbys, and ate there instead. It had pretty much the exact same menu as The Eagle and Child back in Oxford. I think they must be owned by the same company. It was really good though, and there was a good atmosphere, and it wasn't overwhelmingly expensive. I had steak and ale pie again.
Then a few of us decided to head back to the hostel a little early, while the other half of the group went to go check out some pubs. I had 2 essays to write that were due Monday, so I definitely had to go back and get to work. We ended up going back to the same hostel we had stayed at the night before. We had reservations at a different one, but it was more expensive, and someone we knew had stayed there the night before and we found out it was even worse than the one we were already at. We had originally booked it simply because it was the only vacancy. But when I found out how bad it was, even being more expensive, I decided to go ask the guy at our hostel if there was any possible way there was room for us the next night as well. He said there was, but that it'd be complicated. So we ended up doing that, but most of us had to sleep in rooms by ourselves with 7 strangers, which was kinda scary. I had 2 others of our group in my room, but there were still 5 other strangers in there. But I think even though we got to stay together, us 3 had it the worst because we had the worst roommates. We got in at around 8 pm, and they were all already asleep. There was water all over the floor, and they had their wet clothes draped all over the place to dry. Two of them snored like grizzly bears, and one of them had an air pump running sitting outside his bed, with a tube going in (the beds have curtains around them, so we don't really know what that tube was attached to.) So it was pretty dodgy. Plus, you're sheets are supposed to come in a bag, which the laundry people put them in. My sheets were already on the bed, which meant they hadn't been washed since the last person. So I slept in my clothes. Again.
But before we went to the cafeteria to do homework till bed time, we went out to the water behind our hostel. We hadn't even noticed it the first night because we didn't get to the hostel till after dark, but the second night we realized our hostel was right on the Firth of Forth. So we went down to the rocks going up to the water.
So that was a pretty sweet little freebie we didn't know we'd get to see. Apparently the tide comes all the way up that at some point, because there was all kinds of sea creatures still alive on the rocks. The barnacles on this rock were like making noise and stuff...it was kinda crazy.
We tried to stay till sunset, but the sun stays out until like 10pm here, and it was getting really cold and windy, and we all had homework to do. So we had to go in, and after some hard work on the essays we went to bed with our creepy roommates. That was it for Saturday.
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