Scotsmen wear plaid to the clubs

Sorry I haven't written in a bit.  This past weekend was my first international adventure!

Early Thursday morning I went to Edinburgh to visit my friends Natasha and Megan.  They visited me in Dublin last weekend and I showed them around for the day to St. Stephen's Green, the Archaeology Museum, the Guinness Factory (the Guinness there tasted disgusting for some reason, it's much better in pubs) and walked along the Liffey.

For my visit I arrived thoroughly exhausted, having gotten up at 3:50 to leave for the bus at 4:15, and took a nap while Tash and Megan went to class.  Then I ventured up to Arthur's Seat, the highest place in Edinburgh which has incredible views of the entire city.  It's also 3 volcanoes according to one of the taxi drivers.  But still being somewhat lethargic, I decided instead to climb the hills next to it, which had great views of 80% of the city and weren't supposed to entail straight climbing up rocks.  Tired as I was, when I couldn't find the path around the hill, I did decide just to climb up the side of the rocks.  And the view was fantastic.

What shall now be known as Arthur's Footrest

The view, the castle's on an elevated rock formation

Edinburgh is a beautiful city with gorgeous architecture and lots of brown stone.  The city is divided in to New Town and Old Town by a valley which seemed to me like it should have once been a river.  Edinburgh Castle sits atop a giant rock formation overlooking all of the city.

Waverly Bridge in the middle, connecting Old Town (left) and New Town.

Proof I was there at the top

After this mountain climbing adventure (I seem to have many of these somehow), I took another nap, met up with Natasha, Liz arrived, and we walked to town to meet Megan for dinner.  They showed up their campus, too.  There's a beautiful student building with 5 or 6 pubs inside.  One was really cool and used to be a library.  It still had glass cases of old books along all the walls.  Their campus has much more of a classic American campus feel to it than Trinity, which is just crazy architectural buildings all piled together.  I'm not sure what I mean by that, but hopefully someone will understand.

While Tasha and Megan had a meeting, Liz and I roamed around the city and my camera failed at taking nighttime pictures for the most part.  Except, weirdly, this awkward statue in front of the surgeon's museum turned out perfect.

Bizarre Surgeon's Museum statue, "From Here Health"

Classic Edinburgh

We all met back at campus then walked to Megan and Natasha's hall to meet some of their friends and then go out to a dance club.  It was so much fun!! I guess I just haven't been dancing in a long time, but I really had a great time.  The funniest thing is that a club in Scotland is a plaid explosion.  I'd say a good three-quarters to 90% of the guys were wearing plaid.  I couldn't get over it.  Anyway, that was the first day.  I'm doing day-by-day posts and I'll add pictures soon, I'm just a bit tired tonight for reasons that will become clear in the third post.