Hi there!
Lots and lots to write about...we had a great time in Edinburgh at the Fringe Festival. The Fringe is basically a large theatre/music/art festival that happens yearly in Edinburgh. A portion of the Royal Mile (which is the one-mile stretch from the Edinburgh Castle to the Holyrood Palace) is essentially shut down for pedestrians only. It’s a huge street fair where almost all of the local bars/pubs are venues for the different shows going on. The great part about it is that there is a Free Fringe, where there are a bunch of shows you can attend for free. As you can probably imagine, we attended all free fringe shows. We pretty much only made it to the comedy gigs, but we really enjoyed them. Some were definitely better than others, but when they’re free, how can you complain??!! The only thing that got old was that at the end of each of the free shows, they would give you a guilt trip about how the show was free and how they would really appreciate a donation after the show. Then, they’d stand at the back of the room by the exit and collect as the crowd left. We usually gave a pound or two donation on our way out and it was so much cheaper than paying for a show! Being a street fair, there were quite a few street performers as well… these were actually some of our favorites. There was one guy who juggled all kinds of crazy things, all while balancing on a board that was teetering on a cylinder on top of a 6 foot platform that he put together… that is some serious talent. One of our other favorites was these two young guys with long hair and tiny guitars who were playing some classic songs – they were named Pocket Fox, which we thought was great. Each evening during the festival, there was a military tattoo performance that took place up near the Castle. We were considering going, but we decided to save our money and instead we hiked up a big hill down near the Holyrood Palace (which is where the Queen of Scots resides) and we got an amazing view of the town. We got up there around dusk and we stayed for about 30 minutes waiting for the beginning of the tattoo performance to begin, because we could see the castle from afar. We saw some great fireworks and had an even higher appreciation for the beauty of Edinburgh after this hike.
On our last full day in Edinburgh, we headed up to St. Andrews (the ‘home of golf’). Mike was super excited to see the famous Old Course in St. Andrews, and I must admit, it was pretty cool. We took the cliché photo on the 18th hole bridge and we wandered the course for about an hour. The cool thing was that we showed up on a Sunday, and apparently the course is open for the public to wander around on Sundays. We checked out the steep, insane sand bunkers and the hilly, challenging terrain of the course. It was quite impressive. After wandering the course, we went to the Golf Museum, which was also pretty neat. It was interesting to learn that when golf was invented, it was banned three different times by the king because people were playing golf instead of practicing archery in case of an invasion. We also learned that there is a name for a score that’s one better than an eagle, but not quite a hole-in-one… it’s called an albatross! Who knew? So, after checking out the Golf Museum, we headed up the road to check out the St Andrews Castle ruins and the Cathedral ruins – both were breathtakingly beautiful and we got some great photos. Last, we grabbed dinner at a neat local restaurant which had buy 1 get 1 free burgers, which we jumped on! Considering the great deal, we weren’t sure how the food would be, but it was surprisingly awesome. We even tried haggis, neeps and tatties (a traditional Scottish dish – haggis = you don’t want to know, neeps = turnip greens, tatties = potatoes). Although we weren’t sure if we would really want to eat it again, we could definitely stomach it and it wasn’t terrible. After this, we headed back to Edinburgh and called it a night as we had an early train to London in the morning.
The 6 hour trip to London was surprisingly easy. The time flew right by because we took naps, played cribbage, etc. I’m kind of bummed because Mike’s beat me at cribbage every time we’ve played so far on this trip… but oh well! We arrived in London just after lunch and Mike’s friend, Sam, picked us up from the train station and took us straight to one of the local pubs. The weather was amazing, so we sat outside and caught up with him for a few hours. Mike worked at a summer camp in Yosemite with Sam (and a few other British guys), so it was great to listen to them reminiscing about the fun they’d had at camp. That evening, we headed into the city for dinner and met up with another friend of theirs, Chris. They were such nice (and funny) guys and we had so much fun hanging out with people we knew (or at least Mike knew)! We stayed with Sam and his girlfriend, Lindsey, in Teddington, an area that was about a 30-minute train ride into London. We were able to get some good rest in, but we also headed into the city for a few days to get some touristy stuff in, too. We had lunch in St. James Park one day, and we checked out the amazing Buckingham Palace. We wandered through the unbelievably huge department store, Harrods, where we think you could literally buy anything and everything you could possibly want…. no joke. We are talking about carpets, bath tubs, luggage, guitars, grand pianos, laptops, golf clubs, TVs, clothes, paintings, rare gems/stones, chandeliers…. Seriously, ANYTHING! We saw a 1,000,000-pound (that’s about $1.6M) snooker table (looks like a pool table) which was made for the Queen. We saw Ferrari bicycles, and we saw this crazy water/sea toy that looked like a jet ski that you lay on, and it goes all the way under water. The person in the video using it looked like a frickin dolphin – it was insane. I think one of our favorite things about this place was the Egyptian Escalator. It was decked out with Egyptian décor, and it was so neat. We needed a little break to come back to reality after visiting Harrods, so we headed back to the Westminster bridge (near Big Ben) and caught the London Eye (largest cantilever Ferris Wheel on the planet)right at sunset, which gave us an absolutely stunning view of the city.
The next day, we took it easy and really didn’t do much (which was exactly the type of day we needed!). We stayed close to where Sam lives and checked out the local area on bikes. We went to a local chain for lunch called GBK (gourmet burger kitchen), which sort of reminded us of CPK – except with burgers. It was actually great food, and afterward Mike and I were on a mission to check out laptops. We figured out that we had already spent over $50 using internet at various cafes (and at out hostels) and we decided that it would really be worth it to buy a mini netbook if we could find a good deal. We are soo happy with our purchase. Wireless is free virtually everywhere and now we can spend less time looking for cheap internet and more time exploring the cities we are visiting!!
Our next day in London, we took a day trip over to the quaint little town of Bath. The beginning of our trip to Bath was pretty exciting – Mike driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the car and on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. I have to admit that Sam was pretty brave loaning his car to us considering these circumstances, but Mike did a great job and we really didn’t have any issues at all. In fact, I think Mike actually enjoyed it a bit. We arrived in Bath and had lunch at a great place called Riverside café. As you can imagine, this little café was right on the River Avon, and it had a great view of the Pulteney Bridge, some small waterfalls in the river and the surrounding historical buildings. We had some delicious sandwiches and then set off to find the Roman Baths. The Roman Baths tour was better than we expected. From the outside of the building, you couldn’t even tell that there were baths inside. It was amazing to see some of the different remains they found within/surrounding the Roman Baths. There were all kinds of coins, women’s hair pieces, tombstones, even curses that were written to the gods, etc. on display. It was unreal to see how researchers/historians could conclude so much about how the Baths used to look back in 70AD, when they were built. They would have 7 pieces of a wall and they could conclude what the rest of the wall looked like. There were many different rooms with different purposes, and although many were in ruins, the audio tour we were on could paint a picture about how they used to be. The ground in many of the rooms was lifted up by stacks of tiles. There was a furnace that would pump hot air underneath the floor in the rooms and it would heat up the floor (so hot you had to wear shoes to walk on it) and then create a steam room due to the humidity from the baths… pretty cool stuff. The main bath was lined with 45 large copper plates. The bath is about 5 feet deep and they said that, to date, it still has absolutely no leaks. ..unreal. After touring the Roman Baths, we slowly wandered back to the car and managed to make our way back to London without getting lost!
We had a mellow night, where we grabbed fish and chips for dinner and enjoyed some local TV shows with Sam and Lindsey. The most memorable show we watched was called ‘Shooting Stars’. This show would have on special guests (mostly famous British people) and they would be divided into two teams. They compete against each other by being asked ridiculous questions that usually aren’t real and they could never know the answer to, like ‘Can a chicken stand on its head?’ Then, the celebrity will give a random yes or no response, and they will be made fun of if they’re wrong or, if they answer correctly, there will be a ridiculous reason as to why it’s so. So, the guy answered, yes, a chicken can stand on its head… and the host of the show said ‘You’re right! And here’s the proof’. He pulled up a pictured that he drew of a chicken standing on its head. Then, a guy playing the drums in a baby costume arbitrarily assigned points to the team. SOOO random, but definitely a funny, dry sense of humor.
For our last full day in London, we decided to head into the city once more. We walked across the Tower Bridge, which was really cool, and we checked out the Tower of London (which looks like a castle, although we heard it used to be a prison). We also checked out the National History Museum, where we saw some great exhibits on weather, natural disasters, evolution and space. They even had a room set up with a mock earthquake, so you could experience the feeling – although we thought the mock earthquake was a pretty weak one. We grabbed lunch with Sam at this great Italian-type restaurant called Vapiano’s…and this place was neat; you walk in and are given a plastic card (similar to a credit card) to track your purchases. Then, you choose which type of food you want (pasta, pizza, salad) and you get in line to order. Once you order, they make the food right in front of you (even the pasta is homemade there and cooked on the spot). The food was great and on your way out, they swipe your little card and you pay… we thought it was brilliant!
The one bummer we’ve dealt with in the UK is that our Eurail pass doesn’t work over here for the rail system, so we were trying to figure out how we’d get from London to Paris (with the least expenses). We posted an ad on Craiglist, looking for some Eurostar train tickets (a train from London to Paris). These tickets were running for 135 pounds each (super expensive) and, at this point, we were prepared to drive 1-2 hours to a ferry, ride the ferry across to France, and then take another 2-3 hour train ride down to Paris, just because this would be cheap. This would probably end up being a 9+ hour journey. We ended up getting a response to our Craigslist ad from someone who was looking to get rid of 2 tickets and we got our 135 pound tickets for 30 pounds each!! We were soo excited, we now had a 2.5 hour journey straight to Paris on a high speed train!
We spent our last evening in London at a pub near Sam’s house (they were having a beer festival), and we tried some tasty beers from the local region. We had a great time meeting some of his British friends. Mike got a kick out of his conversations with some of them, because they seemed to be more interested in American football than European football. After our late night out, we got about 3 hours of sleep and caught our 7am train to Paris. We are now enjoying this beautiful city… we are using the free wifi internet in McDonalds (which is kind of weird) and we hope to hike up the Eiffel Tower today or tomorrow. More to come soon!
Love, Mike and Kristin
