By Lucy

Days in England: 11. 12? Losing track.

Day two of poor sleep, this time due to whatever respiratory virus I had acquired. It settled in my sinuses every time I tried to lay down, so I couldn’t breathe and jerked awake coughing and sputtering. Eventually I flipped the light on and stayed up on my phone so I wasn’t bothering everyone else who was actually able to sleep.

Like always, in the waning hours of the night I finally managed to drift off. Around 8 we got up and went to the main room for breakfast. The hostel, nice as it is, served a tiny scone for 5 quid, and I decided to never eat there again.

We walk literally five minutes up the road to Edinburgh Castle. It’s the picture perfect castle, perched on a rocky cliff high atop the city, accessible by only a single road. Unfortunately, magically, we picked the only day thus far that it has been foggy to go.

There’s not much to say about the castle that hasn’t been said a hundred other ways in a hundred other places. The views are amazing (if it isn’t foggy). It’s a must-see if you’re ever in Edinburgh. It’s still a functioning military base – The Royal Scots Dragoons AKA the cavalry are still stationed there. It’s also one of the few locations from my trip as a child that I remember with crystal clarity. They were offering the audio tour for free, so my mother took a picture of me reading a plaque while holding a map with the giant headphones on my tiny head.

There’s like 4 different little museums in various buildings, which is warm and a place to sit if nothing else. The one I enjoyed the most was the one about prisoners, especially the door etched with the graffiti. People have been leaving graffiti since the dawn of time, and in some ways it’s more telling than what we deliberately leave as a record.

They are leaning heavily on purchasing tickets online. When we got to the gate, they informed us if we really wanted to buy a ticket at the booth, it would cost us more. Considering we were still missing Rich’s phone, it was quite the slap in the face to anyone who doesn’t have a phone or a data plan. The place was also crawling with French tourists, who presumably decided to make the weekend of Edinburgh since they had already travelled there.

After we were done touring the castle, we wandered back down the road in search of lunch. Across the road from the hostel is a restaurant called “The Filling Station” that promises American food, which seemed like a good idea – not that I miss it, but it was nice to not have to translate a menu. Although their food was good, it was most certainly not in the same form as it would be served in North America.

We also passed a few hilarious locales – a store called “Soctopus” that just sells socks, and Hammerman’s Entry, obviously a place for me.

After lunch, Rich got fed up with a lack of a phone, walked into a service provider, and got a new phone. He needed a new one anyway, the old one had green lines across the screen that were spreading.

We then walked down to a place he has never been: Dynamic Earth. Which is obviously a new construction, jarringly so after days spent wandering around historical towns. Picture stolen cuz no way could I get that angle on the building, because behind the photographer is the Scottish parliament and I don’t want to go to jail.

Dynamic Earth was freakin’ sweet, even if it isn’t strictly historical and isn’t the kind of place you’d usually visit in Edinburgh. It’s a museum of the geological history of Scotland, but that doesn’t do it justice. They have 3 rooms that move and produce smoke and lights while a video presentation plays. Broadly, however, it covers that Scotland is actually a piece of the Canadian shield, that broke off and welded itself to the UK at some point in the last major continental drift. Which explains why the black stones cliffs look familiar – they were carved by the same glaciers that carved every rock between Barrie and Thunder Bay! They even had a refrigerated room with a piece of an iceberg in it that you could touch!

We went to an Indian place for dinner. Now, I like Indian food. There is a brand of canned butter chicken I like to keep in the cupboard for lazy days. However, I do not share the British infatuation with it. Additionally, delicious though it was, it did not agree with me. I’m not supposed to have spicy food and even though this dish was very authentic, that meant more spice and I couldn’t handle it. By the time we got back to the hostel, it was wreaking havoc on my guts. I ran to the bathroom and then curled up in my bunk for a few hours while it sorted itself out.

Rich roused me from my intestinal distress to let me know that it was time for something I had been waiting for since I was 12; the ghost tour!

The ghost tour is no joke either, I had hopes and dreams of going on the ghost tour when I was 12. My father specifically requested we do something else that took place close enough to time and overruled me, but on the appointed night he decided he didn’t want to do it anymore and we sat around the hotel room doing nothing. Which meant the ghost tour had been wrenched from my tiny hands for nothing!

Ah, it was glorious though. The tricked-out bus was amazing; little lamps with tasseled shades, velvet curtains, and there were a few screens around. It became quickly apparent why; the announcer is shown on the screens, but they also used it to superimpose ‘ghosts’ over of him, supposedly haunting the bus. He was a riot; running around the bus with bombastic gestures and announcements, startling inattentive guests, leering directly into the security cameras for full effect! Whatever they pay him, it isn’t enough, because he gave 110% to the role!

Fun as it was, by the time we got off the bus it was pushing 10 o’clock and definitely bedtime for me. We grabbed some vaporub, a whole bunch of tissues and throat lozenges on the way back to the hostel, and I crossed my fingers that would be enough for a good night’s sleep.