First off, if you didn’t know we have gotten a lot of snow here (at least for England’s standards and really for New England’s as well if you consider how early it is). Starting on Thanksgiving it literally snowed every day for a week, and I’m not sure the exact amount of snow we have received but I’m thinking near a foot. It has been really lovely and has led to much sledging (yes they pronounce that ‘g’ so it sounds like ‘hedge’), snowball fighting, and excitement amongst everyone here because apparently we got more snow in one week than is usually received in an entire winter.
The one down side has been that they really don’t know what to do with the snow once they get it. The roads become terrible and the paths around campus although sometimes sanded are generally pretty slippy (apparently it isn’t ‘slippery’ here) or full of slush. This led to the most ironic thing I’ve experienced here so far, a cancelation of a ski training because...wait for it...there was too much snow. I kid you not; we could not train because apparently if you get more than an inch of snow the roads are not easily traversed so the drive to Manchester was out of the question.
Luckily this snow did not prevent me and X from taking a lovely trip with the ERASMUS society up to Edinburgh for the weekend. There were no fanny packs involved unfortunately, but we had a really nice time. The two of us decided that because we were traveling in a group of 50 people it would probably be easier if during our free time we went off on our own to do some exploring and because of this decision it was a weekend filled with some great adventures and ridiculousness that could only happen to the two of us. We arrived on Friday and decided to wander off down the Royal Mile into Grassmarket. Along the way we had our first amusing encounter of the evening with these two very drunk men came up to X while we were both taking pictures of St. Guiles and tried very enthusiastically to explain to us the history and importance of the Heart of Midlothian which we were apparently missing out on and wouldn’t understand because it was covered by the snow. They also tried to explain the source of human life and a few other entertaining things before moving on. We then enjoyed a lovely American style pizza (not actually terrible which was good) and decided to go on a little adventurous pub crawl.
The first pub we entered after first hearing loud music coming from inside and seeing a sign advertising a live band. We disregarded the fact that said pub was Irish and not Scottish and went inside. This first pub was nice and the band was good, playing a weird mixture of old school country music, traditional Irish songs, and a few Christmas songs thrown in for good measure. After a while we figured it would be a good idea to just go back to the hostel and we assumed that the others would probably have already turned in because we had a big day of touring ahead of us. We were wrong.
Upon arriving back at our room in the hostel we realized we were the first back. We decided that it was necessary to ‘not be lame’ and go back out and do some more exploring. This led to us first following a group of what looked like Uni students into a club that turned out to be a little too punk for our taste. So after looking around briefly we were about to head back to the hostel when we were approached by a group of students visiting from Ireland looking for a club ‘Dropkick Murphy’s’. Obviously we had no idea where this was, but we decided to follow this large group of students to this club they seemed really desperate to go to, because obviously that means it must be good. Wrong. Despite the fact that it claimed that it was a club, it was in fact a very large rugby bar (yes I would accidently wander into one, that’s just how my life works) that was in a cave under a bridge with a ceiling that leaked, but apparently this was the place where all the ‘cool kids’ went because it was soon filled with a large number of University of Edinburgh students. We ended up enjoying ourselves dancing to the live band that was playing a strange mix of some old school music and country. But all in all despite the randomness and occasional creeps it was a very good first night.
Saturday was extremely busy. We had a lovely full Scottish breakfast complete with haggis (nice) and black pudding (not so nice), and then went on a really great walking tour throughout the city and ended up our tourist experience with an audio tour of the Palace of Hollyroodhouse. We then found ourselves in the midst of another adventure.
With about two hours to kill before dinner time, I decided that we should wander into the park area right near the palace that our tour guide earlier said was lovely. I spotted some people climbing a path along this hill/rock formation and it looked like we would get a very nice view from up there. I was apparently not thinking about the fact that paths like these were more than likely completely covered in snow, but just saw other people up there and assumed I could get there as well. Wrong. X and I got about 200ft up this path which was snow covered but still manageable when we encountered a problem, neither of us were able to move in any direction because we had suddenly lost all traction and two guys were sledging down the path directly at us. Thankfully they swerved and missed us, but that did not prevent me from accidently sledging myself. We then decided to take the path less traveled (it seemed to have more snow and less ice) and made it far enough that we could get a few nice photos in of the sunset before slowly making our way down. After dinner the entire ERASMUS group went on an attempted pub crawl that was a bit strange, and did again involved me wandering the streets of Edinburgh looking for somewhere that looked exciting, but ended up being a really good time.
Sunday after another full Scottish breakfast (this time with no black pudding), X and I spent the day touring the Edinburgh Castle which was really amazing. I think by the end of it we were a little bit exhausted (I may be one of those annoying people that listen to every single thing an audio tour has to offer…not a big deal). We therefore spent the late afternoon doing some shopping (of the window variety mostly) and enjoying the German Christmas market where we did buy some chocolates and a pretzel. All in all it turned out to be a lovely weekend, and Edinburgh is a really amazing city which I could definitely tell last time I went, but can appreciate much more now.
Sorry for the excessively long blog post. I’ll post some of the pictures later, but for now I’ve got to get my academic hat back on, stop procrastinating and buckle down for the last two weeks of term.
KMT
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