Justine goes to Scotland!

While I am writing this, I am in my room being serenated by lovely singing from the drunk people outside. I hear this frequently because I live on a street where there are pubs, clubs, and student accomodations. Even though I hear it frequently, it does not bother me while I am sleeping. I usually just use earplugs and I go right to sleep.

The other night my flatmates, Lindsay, and I went on a ghost tour. It was free, but the tour guide asked for donations at the end, which was kind of weird. He said that if we give him 5 pounds, that shows that the tour was ok. If we give him 10 pounds then the tour was good. I think he should of just charged us a few pounds in the beginning because it was really awkward to decide how much to give him at the end. Well, the tour was interesting. Actually the tour was good, but the tour guide was interesting. He was this short, old man pretending to be a guy from the 1700s. He always shouted, “This way, mortals!”  I learned about some interesting ghost stories, and it was nice to walk along the Royal Mile at night. There was one story about a woman who was hanged for concealing her pregnancy. So she died, and she was put in the coffin. On the way to the graveyard, the person heard a tapping noise from the coffin. She was still alive! The court decided not to hang her again, because it was an act of god that she survived the first hanging. So she lived 40 more years and had 2 children. She became known as Half-Hangit Maggie. Apparently it is true! I want to go on a few other ghost tours. I know of one other free one, and then there are a bunch of other ones. One goes into the vaults under the city of Edinburgh…it sounds scary! After the tour, a few of us went to a pub and listened to live music.

On Friday, Lindsay and I went off the beaten track. We read both in our travel books and hiking books about this place called Duddingston Village. We walked around Arthur’s Seat (the big hill/mountain in Edinburgh) to Duddingston Village and Duddingston Loch. It took about 30 minutes to walk there. It is this cute, very small, village on the other side of Arthur’s Seat. I think it is technically part of Edinburgh, but it definitely did not feel like a city. Probably during Medieval times when the wall surrounded Edinburgh, Duddingston village was probably not even connected with the city. As we entered, we immediatelly knew we were in a village because the road turned to cobblestone and there was an old church. I read that there is a hole inside the chuch that people who had leprosy used to look through to see the service, but be separated from the other people. After we looked at the church, we decided to visit the Sheep Heid Inn. It is the oldest pub in Edinburgh. It dates back to the 1300s! It was around 2:00 at that time, so we had some tea. It was a very nice pub, and I would like to go back there again. After tea time, we continued on our trek. We walked about 40 more minutes to Portobello Beach. A beach? Yes. There are beaches here. Of course it was way too cold to swim. At that time I was wearing 4 layers and a scarf! It was kind of weird going to a small village to a beach town. This was a very long beach with a boardwalk. There was not much on the boardwalk, but we found this cute cafe that was all beach themed. It had light blue walls with beachy furniture. I loved it. That day, there were so many little children. There were a lot in that cafe. And then there were many people walking their dogs on the beach. Even though it was a cold day, there are always a lot of people outside. After we went to the cafe, Lindsay and I took the bus back into the city of Edinburgh.

Today I went to Stirling Castle with the History Society, Jaci, and Lindsay. It was my first time taking a train in Scotland! It was a good day trip. We took a tour of the castle and then had lunch at a Chinese restaurant…yummm. Unfortunately, it started to rain, so we headed back to Edinburgh right after lunch.

Bed time! Remember, it is 5 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. I hope everyone enjoys the Blizzard back in VA!