I don't even want to talk about how much shortbread I ate.

I'm serious, John Darnell and I (with a little assistance from Colleen and our friendly neighbors across the aisle on the train) ate a MASSIVE box of shortbread cookies.  I should probably be dead right now.  BUT, once again, by the grace of God, I am not. Yay!  All you lucky people get to put up with me for a while longer.  

SO.  The reason I was eating shortbread.  I spent an absolutely fantastic weekend in Edinburgh.  Renee, Connor, John, John, Katie, Colleen and I all set off Friday afternoon on a five hour train ride to experience the magical lowlands of Scotland.  This was my first experience traveling by train.  I loved it!  The ambiance is so delightful (though I wasn't in car with a bunch of drunken scottish men and a very short gentleman dressed as a real life oompa loompa . . . odd? we thought so. . .)but yes, just so many people from so many walks of life all brought together for a little while.  Most of them chatting happily away as they prepare for a holiday in the countryside or a visit home for the weekend.  Amidst the chapter I somehow settled down for a good four to five hours of homework.  It was nice to start the weekend on a productive note for a change.  Especially since I wasn't sitting next to any of my ND friends anyway.  Five very productive hours later, I found myself stepping out onto a rather blustery platform ready to face a weekend of adventures in Edinburgh.  

Adventure number one?  Find the hostel.  After a brief discussion and a brief moment of confusion where we thought the lift sign meant bathroom, we headed off down princess street for a thirty minute walk to Belford Hostel.  Claim to fame?  (at least according to yours truly)  Old Church converted to a hostel by plopping several makeshift drywalls in the shape of rooms in the old church apse.  No cielings on the rooms.  Don't worry, there was a roof.  The church roof.  But no ceiling on the roof.  Pretty funny to walk into a 12 x 18 room with four bunk beds and no ceilings but a vaulted church roof and an oak choir loft above your head.  We wanted Connor to climb up and wave to our neighbors before scaling the choir loft in search of an organ.  Sadly he declined and we opted for dinner instead.  Dinner led us on a scenic tour till a turn chosen by Renee took us through a, um, interesting part of town, and eventually to haymarket where we grabbed some tasty food before heading off to find a live music place that I can't remember the name of right now. Failure.  Epic failure!  I digress.  We found the music place, but there was nowhere to sit, so we wandered on bumping into some fellow domers along the way and accompanying them to a place called the three sisters that was a sports bar, irish pub and dungeon in one?  There was a room with cool stars.  I'm not sure what that was supposed to be.  Ironically that was our favorite room.  I was quite excited there was no cover and even more ecstatic that my coca cola was only 85p.  Fantastique!  Or "brilliant" as the British say.

After Three sisters we wandered back to the live music place for a minute before heading back to hostel for some shut eye.  Saturday morning we woke up around 10 to get ready for our big day at "el castillo" (that was for my toledo stalkers :) my Spanish is pretty legit ;).  The castle, as is to be expected, is absolutely gorgeous.