Hogmanay: Part 2

December 30

I should have had a good seven hours of sleep that night, but the hostel was insanely noisy outside! Actually, it sounded a lot like how terrible neighbourhoods sound in American movies. It made me really glad that L was in the same building. At least we'd both have someone to walk home with. Not that anything awful happened  on the street while I was there, but the area sounded like something could... The bar's garbage bins were located outside the window, so all night we heard the sound of clanking glass whenever they would cart out the beer bottles and chuck them in. When the bar closed, some guys got into some sort of "fight". I put that in quotation marks because it was actually this one guy screaming over, and over, and over again, "What the fuck, mate?!" for what seemed like hours! Then a car alarm went off, the guy took off and his screaming was replaced by a car alarm going for what seemed like more hours. Then the old guy woke up and was super noisy... Yeah, I was insanely cranky. 

I got up and went to shower, which was another disaster and only fuelled my terrible mood. The only free one was the first  and worst shower, though I didn't know this at the time. I had to put my clothes on the floor, on a bed of pyjamas. I got in and turned the shower on and it refused to get hot. I stubbornly waited, deciding that I deserved a hot shower after the previous night's sleep. The hostel apparently didn't agree because my shower stopped draining. I stared in horror as the water continued to rise, looking back and forth movie style to my clothes, on the floor, and the water, still rising. It became a race against time! I needed to shower before my clothes got wet. Steeling myself, I took an extremely fast shower that was cold enough to be considered torture. 

Still pretty cranky at this point. It was made even worse by the fact that the employees didn't know the extension cord's location, so I couldn't dry my hair before going out. Then, while I was waiting for L... Remember how they didn't lock the doors so they could sleep at night without having to let people in? Yeah. Two extremely drunk, extremely Irish blokes wandered in all, "Is this a pub?" Really? If it was it would be the seediest pub in the world. An employee came around and kicked them out, locking the door behind them. The one on crutches came back and tried to ask me about pubs again. Er, at least I think he was. He was the one that was harder to understand, which is an achievement because I was sure both of them were actually speaking Gaelic or something half the time. Oh, and while this was happening I had to get my key card re-programmed. That took forever, because in spite of knowing people would need their key cards redone, they didn't have the system up and running. Ugh. It made me late, and of course I couldn't tell L I was late because my phone had gone swimming. 

I did [finally] manage to meet up with L so we could head to St. Christopher's to meet up with A and pretend to be staying there to get some free breakfast. We wandered across the wrong bridge, then got distracted by the Irish guys returning. They recognized me from the hostel and tried to strike up a conversation, but neither or us could really understand what they were saying. Eventually they wandered off to an open pub [at 9 in the morning! They said they had been drinking all night!] and we figured out our location and made it to St. Christopher's, only slightly late. Feeling guilty, we did buy breakfast instead of scamming a free one. 

Anyway, after breakfast we went to Edinburgh Castle, which is absolutely gorgeous! The crankiness just melted away. It was pretty neat because a lot of the crests and other iconography were brought over to Nova Scotia by those first settlers deciding to [or, being forced to depending on which side you listen to] live in Pictou. My only complaint is that a lot of it was Scotland's war history. Which makes sense, definitely, because Edinburgh used to be contained in the Royal Mile, with huge walls surrounding it to keep out the English. So, of course they would want to document that. I guess I was hoping for a little more on how the people lived and used the castle over the centuries. Though, I suppose that might be a bit stupid because obviously they used it to stay alive and keep the English out...  Yeah, I'm having trouble expressing myself so I'm just going to leave it. The views were fantastic, and the war history itself was very, very interesting. 

Looking down at the city from Edinburgh Castle

After the castle we said goodbye to A, and wandered around the city a bit aimlessly for a while. We looked at tourist shops, I bought some postcards and a kilt, and just tried to get a feel of the city. Of course, we had to stop in at my friend Vodafone so I could replace my phone. I just want to note now that L and I had terrible luck with our stuff on the trip. I broke my suitcase, killed my phone, L broke her purse, lost her scarf, almost lost her hat. Yeah, we had some terrible luck. Anyway, at Vodafone I proved that I can be absolutely insane by acting like some sort of deranged idiot.

My old phone was awful. The touch screen was terrible. Sometimes it wouldn't let me answer calls, the active sync stopped working randomly. It pretty much sucked. It dying was a blessing in disguise I guess, mostly because I couldn't justify getting a new one while the old one still worked. Seriously, Samsung Montes? Terrible. I replaced it with... something. I don't really know what it is, but it's a million times easier to work. I was lucky enough that the SIM card sort of still works, so I can keep my old number until I stop being lazy and get one of those SIM cards that let you keep your number from my Vodafone in London. Anyway, I was so grateful. It's really embarrassing having to tell people that you dropped your phone in a toilet... While sober. But there you go. I proclaimed the employee to be my hero for fixing me up with a deal, a phone, and for getting my SIM card to work. Apparently that's a bit too much appreciation... So, sorry for being creepy, Vodafone Guy! 

After the little side trip to the phone shop, we went on a tour of the Underground City! There are loads of different tour groups, but we happened on Auld Reekie first. They weren't too bad, but apparently there's two underground cities... There's the old vaults where the homeless people and prostitutes lived after the merchants stopped storing their goods there, then there's Mary King's Close. I didn't even see the second option anywhere, but it was the one I googled and the one I was expecting. Instead we got some ghost stories, and learned a bit of history. The tour guide kept talking about people getting kicked and scratched and stuff, but nothing happened to anyone on our tour, sadly. It was fun and spooky, but if I go back I'll definitely look harder for Mary King's Close! 

In the evening we met up with some of L's friends, who were in the city on a Haggis Adventures tour. We pretended to be on the tour, too, mostly so we could get into their exclusive party to meet up with L's friends. Also, so we could have half price drinks all weekend. They were all really, really nice! I also met a couple from Montreal. We chatted about homesickness and they told me about a Canadian pub in Covent Gardens! Guess who's going there soon? Meeeee! 

I was pretty exhausted, so I went home early with some of the other girls. We got pretty lost, but it was worth it because I came across The Elephant House, where JKR wrote Harry Potter! Yeah, I'm a nerd. Anyway, I eventually made it back to the hostel, where I discovered the couple had checked out in disgust and were replaced by two girls! 

I had to charge my phone and my camera, since both of them had died while out. They didn't fully charge though, because there were a bunch of people in the kitchen doing lines of cocaine. They weren't mean or anything, they were just annoying, even to extremely drunk me. They had clearly been doing lines all night, and were so paranoid they went from hilarious to annoying. They kept worrying that the employee was going to come in and see them. Well, idiots, if you're that worried don't spend twenty minutes loudly grinding the powder into... powder. Or you could snort it faster? I don't know, I try not to stick stuff up my nose so I have no idea.

Soooo, that's my second day in Edinburgh in excruciating detail! I know you probably don't want to read it all, and that's fine. It's for me, too. This thing is sort of like my journal, and I just want to document everything so I don't forget! There will be two more days of this, then some more Royal Fail, probably! (: