Edinburgh

 I arrived in Edinburgh late in the afternoon after a huge rainstorm. My first impressions of the city were dark and foreboding in a good way. I had to find a hotel so I could drop my stuff and explore the
city. Now the Scots have a reputation for being a bit crusty. I like crusty. I actually find crusty to be very funny and trust me, the Scots do not disappoint.

I found a hotel online but I am always a bit reserved to enter my credit card info over a WiFi network. I decided to stay at the Royal British Hotel. I rolled up with all my stuff and noticed an older woman smoking a cigarette outside the hotel lobby. I assumed she was an employee, and tried to strike up a conversation with her.

Me- "Hi! I was wondering if the rooms here were nice and if they are affordable?'
Woman- "hgdrjyhtdkjtydfkmghfj!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Me-" I'm sorry I didn't understand that."
Woman- "htgfdnjgrd LATE ROOMS.COM!!!! GET A COMPUTER!!!!"

The hotel was pretty standard fare. It did have a big bath tub, this was becoming more and more important. The little handheld shower spray thingys weren't funny anymore. I need to soak off the road and that meant gallons of hot water.

The next morning I set out for the first day of sight seeing. The old town is filled with narrow streets that twist and turn up and ancient volcano.You can easily see how JK Rowling got her inspiration for Harry Potter.

You get to meet a lot of interesting characters here. I stayed in a great hostel called the Light House. My host John rebuilt the place himself, and was always up for a pint. Here is a link to their face book page.
www.facebook.com/LightHouseHostel

I also met a former tour guide from Grey Friars. He had tons of great stories about people scared out of their minds on midnight tours of the graveyard. He himself never experienced anything, and seamed to think everyone fear was psychosomatic.



The stay in Edinburgh was great, but the next stop is London!

Sweden and the journey begins......

Sometimes in life change happens.....you can't stop it, but you can control how you react to it. For the first time since I moved to New York I was at a cross roads, do I stay or do I go? Should I sign a lease on another apartment? Should I push for a corporate job out of state? There were so many decisions to be made and I could not even think far enough ahead to plan dinner. I knew only one thing, I need a break.
All of my friends had opinions on what I should do, and each one was totally different. I have to admit I rejected all of their ideas before thinking about them. (That IS what we New Yorkers do!) But one idea got in my brain and grew.... pack a bag and buy a ticket to Europe.




I contacted a good friend who lives in Uppsala Sweden and asked if I could visit for a few days. The plan was to get to Sweden and take it from there. I enjoyed a few days with Linda and her family. I was really impressed with the variety of herring Linda kept on hand, and I think she was more impressed that I actually like herring! Uppsala is a really beautiful village but I had the itch to check out Stockholm. I didn't have any plans of where to go or stay. I checked into the Clarion and tried to plan where to go from there. There were so many options. Spain? Berlin? Bali?

I seriously thought about Bali, I had entered my credit card info to book the flight, all I had to do was push that last button and the ticket was mine. Something in me couldn't do it, I decided to wait until the morning to make my decision.

During the night an earthquake hit Indonesia. There were many panicked emails for me the next morning.The saddest one was from my father, so I decided not to give the poor guy any more heart attacks and stay in Europe.

I hopped on a train to Gothenberg with the plans of taking another train to Malo then a ferry to Copenhagen. I went online to book the ticket only to find the train was cancelled the day before. I weighed my options and decided to push west. I had always dreamed of going to Scotland, so I booked a one way ticket on Ryan Air for Edinburgh.


        





For those of you not familiar with Ryan Air, it is by far the cheapest way to get around Europe. but like the saying goes.... nothing is for free. Since my baggage was over the limit it cost more for it to fly than me. The flight only got more "interesting" from there. The gate system was old school. The plane was parked about 100 yards from the airport with a moveable staircase that you climbed from the pavement. I don't think it would be fair to call it a gate, it was more like a starting line, this was because there was no assigned seating. It was a free for all. Boy scouts knocking over old ladies, people pushing and shoving. Personally I found the whole thing hilarious and completely refreshing from the usual American airport treatment. And really, who cares? I was on my way to Edinburgh!