Uggs are NOT climbing shoes

So the weekend started out well with an otley run. Otley road is a major road in Leeds with a lot of pubs on it. The goal is spend a half an hour and have a drink in each. The otley run I went on was Canadian themed and it was a ton of fun!


Friday night I left for Edinburgh. We arrived at our hostel to find we were directly beneath castle rock!! ( The view from the doorstep of the hostel can be seen above). The castle was so beautiful inside. Some of the buildings date back to the 12th century. After a whiskey tasting (which was so good i actually bought some... I am willing to give it to the highest bidder back home) we headed down to the elephant cafe for lunch. For those of you who are not Harry Potter Fans, the Elephant cafe is where J.K.Rowling penned the first harry potter novel on a napkin. From the cafe you can see Castle Rock, a cemetary(with the graves of Tim McGongall and Tom Riddle) and a castle-like orphanage, which the locals say is the "real hogwarts".

After lunch, we headed down to the local starbucks for our free tour. We spent 3 hours walking around learning about Edinburgh history. Highlights included a heart in the middle of the street which people constantly spit on (in tradition with olden times when people spit on it because that was where they collected taxes) Greyfriars bobby ( a dog who sat by his masters grave for 10 years after he died), and trying the local cuisine of deep-fried mars bars(sound disgusting -tastes delicious) and Irn-Bru(a Scottish soda). It was such a cheap and great way to see the city. That night, we went on the pub-crawl with the same tour group and had a ton of fun.

Sunday we decided to hike Arthur seat(the peak to the left in the pic), a large hill with a 360 view of Edinburgh. Since this was a weekend trip, i only brought two pairs of shoes: Uggs and flats. Uggs were perfectly adequate to hike the hill. It was a bit steep at parts but nothing horrible. We were lucky to have a clear day, because we could see for miles from the top. We sat and ate our lunch and heading back down the hill, and this is when our problems began. 6 of us had climbed Arthur's seat, 4 guys and 2 girls. The guys choose the path down, and what do you know, they decided we were going to climb down the cliff face. If Emma and I had been wearing tennis shoes, it would have been fine... but climbing down a pretty vertical cliff with ugg boots and a longchamp purse is not really the way to do it. Nevertheless we made it down... and it was totally worth it.

I spent the few hours we had left at the Edinburgh museum, seeing Dolly the Sheep (stuffed and creepy looking) and various ancient Scottish artifacts. Then we hopped on the train and headed home!!

In other news... I passed my first test!! yay!! Its refreshing to know I can still pass this semester even though I am gone every weekend/ cannot will myself to do much schoolwork. I also got a lovely care package from my parents containing lots of goldfish, chex mix, girlscout cookies, and easymac so I am not longer suffering from American food withdrawl. I am heading to Prague tomorrow (AH!!) which will be the first European country, besides England, I have EVER been too!