Edinburgh!

Woke up at 5 am today, definitely not my usual start time. I thought I'd use the extra time to my advantage and make myself a full Scottish breakfast (minus the blood pudding) in my apartment's kitchen. The poached egg, toast, and beans went according to plan, but my potato hash hit a minor speed bump as my kitchen comes with a cutting board and vegetable peeler but no chef knife. I wound up hacking at my potato with a table knife, with limited success.

Made it onto the 7 am train to Edinburgh, and since it's a mere 50 minutes away, that I meant I could pack a full day in - and let me tell you, I made the most of it! I walked and walked and walked until my feet were sore, and then I sat for 15 minutes before starting to walk again.

First stop was a stroll down to our old flats from my University of Edinburgh day. It was nice to stroll around and relive some fond memories of my time there. It looked like some new students were just in the process of moving in too, which just got me waxing all nostalgic about my own excitement about starting a school year in a foreign country! Before all the homesickness and longing for Mexican food kicked in..



Then a climb up to the top of Arthur's Seat, which I remembered climbing a few times but couldn't quite figure out how we got up there. Luckily, I found a nice Australian family temporarily living in the UK who knew a super secret shortcut to get up to the top of the hill.

Arthur's seat:



And the views from the top:




This is the way I came back down, stairs the whole way. My knees were wobbly by the time I got to the bottom!



Then I did a grand walking tour of downtown Edinburgh, hitting up all of the historic parts, the shopping, basically re-visiting all of my old haunting grounds. It was a fantastic visit, and I'm glad I got the chance to do it.

When I returned to Glasgow, I saw a TON of guys in kilts, wearing the Scotland football (soccer) team jersey. They were everywhere: queued up for trains, at the fish and chip shop, at the ATMs, just flooding the streets. As it turns out, the Scottish team was playing the Czech Republic for a spot in the Euro 2012 games (Scotland lost) in Glasgow today; I must have just arrived back in Glasgow just after the game got out. Everybody says football fans are super rowdy and annoying, but everybody I saw seemed on good behaviour (especially considering their team had just lost!) Anyway, kilts are awesome. I didn't take this picture (it's from the Telegraph), but this is what they looked like: