A Bed and Breakfast is nice… an apartment is better :)

Thanks to Michelle at the Edinburgh train station, we had the huge blessing of having our own apartment for the five days we were in Stirling. She called a couple of places looking for an affordable hotel or Bed and Breakfast room for us and found that most things were booked up. One business she called though, was eager to keep our business even though they didn’t have any room available, so they offered us an apartment for the same price as the single room would have been. We talked them into including breakfast and we had a deal!

This turned out to be the perfect apartment for us. We each had our own rooms and bathrooms

a living room big enough for both of us to spread out in

The view from our window

and even a full beautiful IKEA kitchen which made me (Chelsea) very very happy :)

Once we got settled in, we decided to take full advantage of our model kitchen and buy our own food to cook for lunches and dinners. Enter Tesco! This place made it possible (along with a bit of creativity and ingenuity on our part of course ;)) for us to make 5 lunches and dinners for both of us for 16 pounds total. That’s about $25.50. Of course we were light eaters that week, but it didn’t matter. It worked out perfectly too, because Jeanette likes cooking more than I do, and I don’t mind cleaning up. So she fed us and I cleaned up after us and we were both happy :)

The next day, we had to check out the awesome looking castle on the hill- Stirling Castle. Our landlord-for-the-week, Andrew, told us the government just spent something like 6 million pounds renovating the castle and that it was definitely worth a visit. 13 pounds ($20) and a couple of hours later, we couldn’t have disagreed more. Yes, you read that correctly! We were pretty disappointed at exactly how renovated it was. New paint, new wood shutters, a sherbet orange building, the prince’s nursery with pergo wood floors. I mean really? Shouldn’t historical renovations keep the historical part intact, or is that too much to ask? Needless to say, we wouldn’t exactly recommend it. Unless you plan on waiting a couple hundred years when it might actually look “old” again.

The only good part about this castle was the view.

Stirling day three was Sunday, so we paid a visit to Stirling Baptist Church which we had walked past the day before. The outside was a typical old chapel (typical for UK, of course not typical for the US) but inside was a modern church, complete with a band. We even knew a few of the songs, which was nice. But at the end we got the biggest surprise when it turned out the guy sitting in front of us was from Kansas just coming through on a biking trip of Europe!

After church and before getting into our homework, we decided to hike up to the William Wallace Monument we’d been seeing from our living room window the past few days. Forty-five minutes later we had ascended the hill that the monument is situated on. We walked into the gift shop/ticket office and found out it was 6 pounds to go up to the monument.

Being on a bit of a tighter budget and after spending 13 pounds at Stirling we were not in a mood to pay that amount for something we weren't sure we wanted to see. So instead we had a lovely, free walk back down to our apartment. Once there we filled out our day with some homework.

Day four in Stirling turned into a full on study session. We decided that it would be a good day to lay low and get some much needed work done. By the end of the day we were kind of sick of sitting and decided we needed to get out. We set out for a walk along the river our window overlooked. What we came across though was 10 pin bowling!

We decided that nothing could be better than to go bowling in Scotland. So we did. : ) Chelsea did awesomely. And I (Jeanette) didn't. But it was fun anyways.

Our last day in Scotland was by far the best! We didn't really have plans for this day so the night before we randomly chose one of the castles I (Jeanette) had found before we left for this grand adventure. It turned out to be one of the best randomly chosen adventures ever. We took our train trip to the lovely seaside town of Stonehaven and were in love with it right away. It was about a 2 mile hike from the train station to the castle ruins, and it may have been the most beautiful walk we've ever taken! Our first "task" was walking along the boardwalk and putting our hands in the North Sea.

The boardwalk led us to an old bay, where the trail began and took us up the road to an amazing trail that went parallel to the coast between fields of wheat overlooking rocky inlets.

We were floating in the air with happiness! It was the most beautiful scenery ever! The castle came into view after about a half hour and left us breathless. We had seen photos of the rocky jutting peninsula the ruins stood on before we came on the trip, but things like these are always better in person (real life?) than in photos. This was no exception.

We got to the path down to the castle but didn't know where we were supposed to pay the entrance fee. So we made a slight unsuccessful excursion to find that. After asking a few people who didn't know either, we went down the narrow path to the castle. It was a very long set of stairs down the side of one mountain and then up to the entrance of the ruins. Very good for defense not so great for sieges. But amazing surroundings either way! We found out the entrance fee is paid inside the castle and was only 5 pounds!!! Talk about 5 pounds well spent.

Dunnottar Castle renovations.  : )

The ruins were the perfect combination of a broken down castle and enough bones left to be able to see what used to be there. We ate our sack lunch while wandering around the castle; loving the freedom given to see the castle as it is now, missing floors and ceilings, while still keeping you safe from falling through said missing floors and ceilings. After wandering around for a couple of hours, we couldn’t resist heading down to the beach to soak in the amazingness. It was full (literally!) of sea shells and rocks in between cliffs right in the shadow of the ruins up on the hill.

After gathering a pocketful of shells, we hid for awhile in a cave from a down pour of rain (As our English mum told us (from her mother), “if you can’t see the mountains, it’s raining. If you can see them, then it’s going to!”) before heading back to the train station to head back for our last night in our apartment. 


-Chelsea and Jeanette

Tattoos are good... festivals for them are better!

This was the beginning of our first time being away from adult supervisionJ And of course, being the inwardly wild girls we are, we went all out by going to the Edinburgh Tattoo Festival. No joke.

We took the train that would take us partially along the coast of northern England and southern Scotland. It was a beautiful 4.5 hour ride! 

When we arrived at the train station, we went straight to the accommodations office where Michelle helped us out tremendously. She immediately made some calls for us and found us a place for that night at the Old Waverly Hotel, then she also found us an amazing deal for a bed and breakfast room for the rest of the week, which then turned into a full-on apartment! We decided she was the sweetest Scottish lady ever.

We headed out to our hotel just a block and a half away on the main street, enjoying the street bagpipe player all the way. We couldn’t check into the hotel yet, but thankfully for our backs, they would hold our backpacks for us until then. There was a week’s worth of stuff in those bags, so we couldn’t get them off fast enough.

Lunch was the next order of business and we headed out into the big world of Edinburgh to find a good place to enjoy it. Michelle, from the accommodations office, had recommended we see the “best view of Edinburgh” on Calton Hill so we started wandering that direction. On the way there, we enjoyed the street scene. People dressed strangely, 

monuments,

and even street chess.

Jeanette took her on in a game of speed chess, and although she lost, the lady said she was surprised at how well Jeanette played :)

Although we didn’t go to any other big vista views of the city, it’s hard to imagine there could be a better one than at the top of Calton Hill. Having lunch overlooking a view of the entire city and bay was just fantastic. 

 There were a lot of monuments on the hill (and in the whole city actually), including the National Monument that looked like an attempt to recreate the Greek Parthenon. Turns out they started building it in 1822 as a tribute to the Scottish soldiers who died in the Napoleonic Wars, but when funds ran out in 1829, the building stopped and was never started again.

We went back down into the city to wander around a little more, since we still couldn’t check into the hotel room and saw a really old cemetery. One thing we’ve learned in our travels is that if we see something that looks interesting, we’d better stop right then and see it because if we wait, we’ll either not be able to find it later or the time will get away from us. So into the cemetery we went. Turned out Abraham Lincoln is buried there. Ok just kidding :) But they did have a monument dedicated to Scottish-American soldiers rather prominently featuring President Lincoln :)

  

Around this time, we remembered that we needed to find the ticket office and pick up our tickets to the Edinburgh Tattoo Festival! Thankfully we had discovered this festival months earlier and ordered our tickets to be held for us and picked up on the day of the event, but we now had to find the office before that evening. We started following the directions we had and searched for quite awhile without success. At this point it was time to check in, so went back to the hotel and got settled into our room.

Dinner on a budget is always a creative endeavour, and now was no exception (we got even more creative in Stirling!). On a student budget, going out to eat is a luxury. So we headed to the train station to find cheap food! Marks & Spencer grocery store ended up winning the prize that night with a delicious bread thing that we split before caving in and taking a nap. We were also able to figure out exactly where the ticket office was after we checked into our room, so we grabbed our tickets when we found dinner. 

After waking up from our respective naps and collecting all possible articles of warm clothing, we headed out to the Tattoo Festival.  Ok... so the Tattoo Festival is not what you might be thinking now.  The full name of it is The Edinburgh Military Tattoo Festival and a tattoo here in not meant as an ink marking upon the body but rather an outdoor military pageant or display.  This is an outdoor concert of military bands from around the world and is one of the most attended concerts in the world.  More than 12 million people have attended the Tattoo since its beginning in 1950 and the annual audience is around 217,000.  We were lucky enough to be one of those in attendance at this year's concert. 

We were ushered into the grand stands just outside Edinburgh Castle and waited with great anticipation and excitement for the show to begin.  It began and was the most amazing concert we have ever been to!!!  There's nothing better than live military bands and hundreds of bagpipers. 

Some of our favourite bands were the Dutch Bicycle Band, the Brazilian Marine Band, the Swiss band complete with Alphorns, and the SWAT team demonstration. 

The Finale, though, was the best part.  All the bands came out and filled the arena one by one until they filled the entire space.  We were so excited to hear them start playing various pieces from the soundtrack of How to Train Your Dragon which is amazing enough in recordings but absolutely astounding live!! 

We went back to our hotel very happy, very tired, and very glad we had a room nearby.  It's pretty near impossible to describe the beauty of the music and remarkable talent of all those who performed in the concert.  It was incredible and if you ever are going to Scotland in August we would highly recommend you go (if it's not sold out...)  : )  It will be worth every single penny you pay. 

-Chelsea and Jeanette