Edinburgh Part One

We left Limerick at 1:00 pm, and finally got to Edinburgh at 9:30 pm. It was a long day of travel from bus to bus to plane to bus, then a lot of walking in a new country with a very limited map. We found our hostel, the Brodie, but the sign said it closed at 6:00 pm, so we ring the bell for a few minutes, and have no answer, so we are out of luck. On Halloween weekend in Scotland, you are not going to find a place to sleep, but we try anyway instead of sitting there pouting. So we walk about 15-20minutes and find a hotel, it is the nicest looking hotel I have seen in a while, but we're desperate. The guy informs us that they are fully booked, but gives us a phone to try and call the hostel. Turns out there are two of the same hostels pretty much directly accross the street from one another. So they were open, and we are now relieved, but you can imagine how stressful that hour was. We wanted a beer, but by the time we actually got back and put our stuff down and got to a pub, it was pretty much closing time. We went to eat at a hole in the wall (where you get the best food), and some guy from a show called the 'X Factor' walks in, and the entire staff, all five of them go nuts. They begin taking pictures of this guy and telling him he was the best and blah blah blah, turns out it is a form of American Idol. Next we just want to get to the hostel to sleep, passing a guy in a costume who we talk to, and tells us we should have gone to Glasgow, another Scottish city, where he lives. He was also the source of my new favorite quote, he says, "you would have been as welcomed as a fart in a spacesuit, but you still would have a great time."
When we woke up we had breakfast, followed by a free walking tour, by the same company that we used in Dublin. This tour was 3.5 hours of walking so you can imagine there is a lot to learn, and too much to share. The most interesting thing I found was a graveyard that was the biggest in Scotland, and they told us that when a person is buried there, they can pay a family member or friend to sit on the grave for two weeks and prevent graverobbers from trading their recently buried friends to the black market. This was the origination of the term, 'Graveyard Shift.' We got to have Haggis, which is the national dish of Scotland, and it is the unused parts of a sheep, like the heart, neck, and that good stuff, inside of a sheep stomach, cooked and served on a bed of mashed potatoes, and as nasty as it sounds it actually wasn't too too bad. We got to have American pancakes as well, and tonight going to watch football, and celebrate Halloween with a haunted underground tour of the city.