Hogmanay: Part 1!

Okay, first off I had a brilliant time at Hogmanay! It was absolutely fabulous. I'm definitely going to tell you all about it in excruciating detail, so I apologize in advance to those of you who want a Royal Fail update [there really isn't one, package still in transit]. Of course, it wasn't all good, and obviously I'm going to tell you those bits, too!

The Arrival

The train ride up was gorgeous and lots of fun. I arrived in Edinburgh in the early evening starving and ready for a fabulous weekend! The first thing you need to know about Edinburgh is there are stairs, everywhere. I had to take the Princes Street exit at Waverley Station and there are so, so many stairs for a weary traveller to drag her suitcase up. Luckily, my hostel was only a three minute walk from the station. It was called City Centre Hostel, and seriously if you can avoid it DO NOT stay there for reasons I will expand upon as I tell you about my trip. It's up about a million stairs. There's two hostels in the building, my friend L stayed in the other one. This other hostel painted the walls with some pretty awful art that helpfully told you how many stairs to go. It sort of smelled, and there were people hanging around outside because it was next to a pub. Basically, if I was a homeless person I'd probably sleep in this stairwell.

I got this off Google, but it actually sort
of looks like the street City Centre is on...

Anyway, I make it into the hostel and had a conversation with a couple of guys as the employee checked me in. The guys seemed to love the hostel, said it was awesome. Of course, as I found out later they thought it was awesome because they could do lines of cocaine in the kitchen [I wish I was joking]. The employee was actually pretty cute and really nice, so of course he would be the employee I got to interact with the least. Wouldn't want the guests to get too comfortable or anything, they might think they deserve something like heat or plugs in their rooms. I am informed that I have to re-program my key card every day before 10, which didn't seem unreasonable at the time but it quickly became more annoying as I slowly became more sleep deprived over the weekend.

The bed was pretty dirty, the room was small and absolutely freezing. I thought the window was open, but when I went to check it a little while later it was shut tight. Turned out the heat was just off for some bizarre reason. I made the bed and quickly discovered that 1. there were no plugs, and 2. the guy had given me three sheets instead of one. Awesome! I stuffed one in the extremely flat pillow, and put the other one down as an extra layer of protection between me and the filthy bed. At this point I should probably mention that they had already debited my credit card the full amount and informed me that I wouldn't be able to get a refund unless I asked for one two weeks before I arrived. So, yeah. It's almost like they know they're awful [/sarcasm].

I explored the small and filthy bathroom, and the shower area, and asked the guy where the plugs were located. Just in the hallways and in the kitchens. Why? Because they wanted to discourage people from leaving their cell phones in their rooms charging. Lies. The whole thing was set up to maximize their profits with as little output as possible. There were no plugs in the room for the same reason the heat was on a timer, and for the same reason they refused refunds even though 75% of the people who booked more than one night only stayed for one, if that. It was a scam, basically.

L's bus was running late, so I tried to nap a bit since I hadn't been sleeping well leading up to the trip. I chatted for a minute with the Australian couple I would be sharing the room with, and with this annoying old guy who worked at the hostel. I thought he was homeless at first, actually he still might be honestly. He read in the room the whole time I was trying to nap and he was so gross and loud. He kept shaking the bed, which I assumed was because the bunk beds were scary and old, but no one else was as loud as him. He ate crisps loudly and obnoxiously and generally made it so I couldn't really nap. Another annoyance was a different employee [the third so far] who kept coming into the room and asking us if we had extra sheets since he was missing one. As we all know, I totally had the extra sheets... But I wasn't about to give them up. Thankfully, L soon arrived and got settled in so we could leave for dinner!

Of course, we sort of immediately got lost... Er, it was a theme over the week because I tended to talk to her ear off while walking randomly and she thought I was leading... Luckily she's a very good sport! Anyway, we were staying just off Princes Street, but most of the pubs, restaurants and tourist stuff were on the other side of the bridges, near the castle. The Royal Mile was located there, and Georges Street and Cowgate and stuff. It was almost nine by this point, and a lot of the first restaurants we spotted were closed [this is a theme in the UK, nothing stays open all that late for some reason. I'm never complaining about NS and its malls that close at 9 again]. Desperate for food, I stopped a random in the street all, "Hey, we're hungry, can you recommend a place to eat?" The guy turned out to be a lovely kid from Brazil! It was fabulous! He was in Edinburgh for a few days, going home the next afternoon to spend New Year in Glasgow. He took us to his hostel, St. Christopher's where we ate the best nachos ever [they may not have been, I was just seriously starving].

Okay, so, I've never heard of St. Christopher's, but it's apparently this Australian chain of hostels that are brilliant. From what I saw over the weekend the one in Edinburgh seemed absolutely amazing. I'm going to start looking for them when I travel, definitely.

But, back to the story. L and I were both crazy exhausted, so we had dinner, had a drink, chatted with A and decided to meet the next morning to visit Edinburgh Castle before A headed to Glasgow. I took his number [this is important] and we headed back to our gross hostel... Where I immediately made friends by turning on the light in my room to three sleeping people. It was only eleven! In Edinburgh! How were they already sleeping? I felt awful, turned the light off, grabbed my bed stuff [including my phone so I could have light when I got back to the room], and went to the gross, tiny bathroom to change in my pyjamas.

It was a disaster. I put everything on the back of the toilet, then watched in horror as everything slid off the back of the toilet. Frantically I grabbed my pyjamas, grabbed the key to the room... and didn't grab my phone. My phone FELL INTO THE TOILET OF THE GROSS HOSTEL. I was mortified, and stood there staring at it for a good ten seconds before I cleared my mind, took a deep breath and hauled it out. I quickly changed and then made my way to the lobby where another girl and I tried to dry it. I managed to call L for 10 seconds to tell her what happened before it died completely. Dejected, I went to bed with the pieces out and drying. I set my ipod alarm and hoped for the best, since the thing never works properly...

And, okay. This is getting insanely long so I'm going to cut off here and start a new post! (: Okay, so maybe I'm milking this for a couple of posts... Can you blame me? I haven't had a whole lot to talk about except Royal Fail and how homesick I am... I feel like we both can appreciate how awesome it is to not write/read about that for a couple of days!

<3 Jade