Wee Trip to Scotland

Hey friends, fans, and forced-to-read-this loved ones-- time for another entry by yours truly. This past weekend, me and my mate Katie embarked on the trip of a lifetime, a mere 4.5 hours away from our lovely london home. We went to the place that's home to adorable cows, very stong whiskey, men wearing skirts, and accents so thick you get really good at pretending you understand what people are saying when half the time all you hear is "golly eh blubber frock?" Today, a waiter at a restaraunt asked me if I wanted a table for one and I nodded bc I thought he was saying that the winter weather was particularly bad.

I am of course referring to SCOTLAND! This entry will be filled with super cute pictures of my new friends Adam, Harold, and Sharquishka (Ed was kinda camera shy) and with the tips and tricks of having a wee good time in Edinburgh and Glasgow, the two cities we visited. We spent two days in Edinburgh and three in Glasgow, and if you haven't figured it out by the end of this blog, we would recommend doing a switcheroo and spending a bit less time in Glasgow. It's great, but unless you're able to get down one whiskey shot more than me and Katie (so one shot period) or you're particularly into walking the rainy streets of random subarbs, theres really not much else to do. Anyways, let me take you down the adventure of a lifetime.

Katie and I left london early Thursday morning, and our adventure started with me forgetting that the tube does not work until 5 am on weekdays...so we began the fun task of hopping from bus to bus with our luggage in hand. Between buses zooming past us and not getting breakfast that morning, we were two tired gals by the time our train arrived in Edinburgh. Our exhausted bodies were welcomed to the city by the realization that 85% of Scotland is hills. The other 15% is catching your breath in between hills, so that's wonderful.

Besides that, Scotland seems to follow like 0% of England's regulations. Masks are mandatory, half the people walk on the right side of the street, and the weather alternates between hail and sun every five minutes. When we finally made it up the hill (and after the first of Katie's MANY calls to AT&T to get service), we went to Layla's, a cute cafe with the most adorable drinks and ambience. With a cute neon sign and lucky charms + caramel apple lattes, not to mention delicious egg yoghurt dishes, Layla's has cracked the list of my favorite brunch places in the UK, and I don't think I'll be giving away that spot anytime soon #notsponsored

We then adventured around some local hotspots and stores, including the super weird Edinburgh dungeon (look it up!). We walked up yet another hill to our Travelodge before meeting our tour guide for yet another Harry Potter tour. The tour was super cool. We visited plaques of JK Rowling, the tombstones that inspired the character's names, the cafe Rowling wrote in, and a bunch of other super niche spots that only harry potter fans could ever care about. We spent the rest of the day exploring and most importantly, trying HAGGIS. I would tell you what exactly that is, but "Lost in London" holds no responsibility for throw up or adverse reactions, so you can look that one up at your own risk. I actually quite enjoyed it, but I think my haggis days may be over. By this point, it had magically started snowing and we were tired so we called it a day. [Here is where I add, against my will, that during the tragic hours inside the hotel, I got my hair sucked up by an evil hair dryer and thought I was going bald. Good thing that was a total false alarm, and just a shitty hotel's idea of a bad April Fools Joke.]

Friday morning we had tickets to Edinburgh castle, which meant **surprise!** another hill. After getting our fuel from some yummy avocado toast at another delicious brunch spot and storing our luggage (the only tip I'm gonna include here is whatever you do do NOT store your luggage in the edinburgh waverely train station) we explored the castle, which had some of the most breathtaking views I've ever seen. Unfortunetely for us, we decided to take a seat on a bench at exactly 12:58 and missed the 1:00 gun, which is a daily gunshot that's supposed to be a highlight of Edinburgh castle. It takes a special kind of person to book a tour at the perfect time to hear the gun go off and then accidentally miss it, but I'm happy to report that I am indeed that kind of person.

After the castle and grabbing a pint of delicious irish cider, we hopped on a bus to take a walk and see the beautiful highland cows that Scotland is known for. I think I was expected to get dropped off in front of a cute cow, so imagine my surprise when the bus stopped outside a Morrison's and me and Katie walked 20 min around a random neighborhood. After a while though, we made our way towards the highland, which is just the most beautiful landscape filled with *you guessed it* lots of hills. Katie will say I'm being dramatic, but this began the 40 minute HIKE uphill, enduring treachurous obstacles like mud everywhere, ditches, and unpredictable weather. After a lot of walking and even more complaining, we made it to the top of the hill. I can't describe to you the pure joy I felt when Katie yelled that there was a cow, who we named Harold. After also meeting his friends Adam, Sharquisha, and Ed (named after Ed Sheeran bc he was a cute lil ginger), I've come to the conclusion that the only acceptable thing to do was to adopt all four of them. So this is my way of formally announcing to my parents that we are now adopting four beautiful highland cows into our family. Jokes aside, there are some pretty adorable pictures at the end of this entry.

At this point, you're probably wondering why so much of this blog is talking about Edinburgh and so little about Glasgow when we spent most of our time there. Well that's because that's kind of a reflection on that part of the trip lol. We got to Glasgow Friday night, and spent that night realizing that while we were under the impression we had booked another Travellodge through a website called easyhotel.com...we actually booked a hotel called easyhotel.com. This recommendation will be the easiest one I put in any of my blogs: do NOT book easyhotel.coms. In fact if there is a .com in your hotel room, I would stay away just in case. But if you're on the lookout for a broken heater in the sketchiest street ever, than easyhotel in Glasgow may be a good bet.

We spent Saturday and Sunday exploring Glasgow, which just means shopping around and going to Glasgow's many pubs. The highlight was being in a pub and a bunch of bagpipe players came in to play some irish music. Definitely caught us off guard lol, but I know I'll miss that once we're back in England. Other things we did: tried a deep fried Mars bar, completed 3/10 of a Glasgow pub cycle, I split my finger open attempting to open a crab leg (I think we're cursed), did a pretty cool whiskey distillery tour (and had 1/2 a shot of whiskey), ate at a church turned pub, checked out the local art museum, and aimlessly wandered around the city. Today, we did a pretty cool Harry Potter Potions Cocktail making session, which was awesome except that mine was supposed to change color but ended up turning Brown and tasting terrible.

All in all, it was an amazing trip. But how does one measure an amazing trip? Is it in number of AT&T calls, accent mishaps, baldings, easyhotel cancellations, or hills? Or is it the amazing moments and sights in between, made only better by me and Katie being our silly American selves? I'd say it's probably a mix of both. And while I won't be back to Scotland (especially Glasgow lol) anytime soon, I think I've picked up enough of a scottish accent (and enough happy memories I guess) to take with me.

I'll see you in the next one, where I'll be joining from Italia:)

Ciao,

Sharon