If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my feed or subscribe to me on Twitter, which is updated on a more frequent - and more meaningless - basis.
I’m back from my trip and I had an awesome time. Scotland is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been lucky enough to see. The views were amazing and the architecture was awe inspiring. I’m glad it was on my list of things I wanted to do.
We arrived in Scotland Tuesday afternoon and spent the first night in Glasgow visiting a few people. Then, on Wednesday, we headed to Edinburgh and checked into an executive room at the Glasshouse which did not disappoint from the pictures. We did get a quick laugh though at the artwork of naked women in our room though.
We arrived too late to do any sightseeing at the official tourist things, but decided to venture out to Princess street and the royal mile and do some sightseeing of our own. We found a place to eat and I was relieved to find out that my picky eating ass wouldn’t starve in Scotland (though the stuff they call bacon is clearly ham).
We spent the rest of that night doing our first “pub crawl” (which included Finnigan’s Wake on recommendation from pmac) and learned an important lesson about Scotland. After 10 p.m., the ability to get food in the downtown areas is almost non-existant. The restaurants have closed shop and the pubs stop serving food. Since we had eaten at about 3 p.m. earlier that day, we were starving. So, we broke into the employee snack room when we got back to the hotel and bought two sodas and what amounted to an armful of Walker’s potato chips crisps.
We woke up the next day about noon and traveled downtown again to see the castle. The problem was that by the time we got dressed, ate and made it to the castle, we didn’t have enough time to see it properly (as the attendent informed us) so we had no choice but to start another pub crawl. We did however stop at an Indian place (name we can’t remember) for food. My plan was to eat at a pub later, but I was convinced to at least try the chicken massala and I have to admit, it was damn good.
By about seven p.m. we were feeling good and met up with my friend Calum and his friend Ewan at the Scotsman hotel for drinks and then headed to Bar Roma for dinner.
Bar Roma was beyond fantastic and was the best meal I’ve had in a long time. We ordered lots of drinks, several bottles of wine (I stuck with beer since I don’t drink wine) and had a really good time. We then headed to the Opal Lounge where we all had plenty to drink (and yes! they had goldschlager) and left feeling pretty damn good (thanks again to Calum who totally rocks and made sure we had a blast).
We woke up on Friday, and headed out. We stopped at the National Gallery of Scotland where I took in some artwork. We then hit Edinburgh Castle and probably spent about three hours touring the place. It is amazing, because when you’re a kid, you’d be itching to get out and bored. As an adult, I was fascinated by the views and the history that existed there.
As coincidence would have it, our friends Lauren and Leanne happened to be backpacking through Scotland during the same timeframe, so on Friday night, we met up with them and did a heavy pub crawl night, which amounted to us finding one bar called the Black Bull with a DJ, some shots called “squashed frogs” and having a “right good piss up” until the bars closed.
Saturday we slept in, then did some shopping and visited with some other people for the night… hitting Bar Roma again (man is that place good) and then heading to a place called Ryan’s bar that we remained at until we were asked to leave after they closed. The next day, we headed back to Glasgow and took in some sights at Loch Lomond and then finally headed home.
I had an absolute blast. Most of the pics are up on Facebook, but this should have been enough to give you an idea along with a few other selects on flickr. I feel relaxed and amazingly clear. I’ll be posting my comments on guestwhore week tomorrow. For now, I have 12K emails to plow through.
-- Subscribe to the Sugarrae feed
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I love Edinburgh, I am jealous. Nice pics :-)
Glad you had a good time. I’ve never been to Scotland - it looks lovely
Your guest bloggers also had a good time while you were away … LOL
re: the guest bloggers - that was a great idea BTW. It was fun to read posts from people who I previously knew only by association or reputation.
Dammit Ian, they’re guestwhores! Get it right lol.
Welcome back to the real world Rae
Glad to hear you found Edinburgh to your liking. Sounds like most things went as planned.
You may yet inspire me to do the ‘tourist thing’. My parents are coming up mid-June so it would be useful to sound semi-knowledgeable.
I’d be curious to see the rest of those pics. I’ve sent you a request on facebook but as we don’t exactly know each other feel free to ignore it. I’m the big blue question mark.
I hope you stopped by the Bank Hotel on the Royal Mile. They have a drink named after me there. Did you happen to sample a fried snickers bar down the road from there also? It’s only for the brave of heart.
Welcome Home!
We took care of your blog nicely while you were away. Kid Disco gave away lots of link-love to SEOmoz and we swore a lot.
Those shots do looked very squashed frog-esque. Were they good?
Yes, they were. Which was lucky for the bartender, cause not only did I tell him I wasn’t tipping him if they sucked, but I also threatened bodily harm. :P
Welcome back, I am practically drooling in anticipation of your opinions on the guestwhores, who, btw were my introduction to your blog.
I’m so glad you’re back. Who else will harass me every day as well as you can?
Scotland looks damn fantastic.
well that’s one mystery solved - always thought you Americans had very thin pigs!! - we call that streaky bacon - now I know I need to ask for ham and eggs - to get ‘proper’ bacon - cheers
Glad you enjoyed our wee city. Pity you weren’t here a couple of weeks earlier when the weather was clearer and warmer. Edinburgh is a bit of a hotbed of SEOs so maybe we should organise a conference and you can come back over. Then we can show you a real pub crawl ;-)
Can’t believe you didn’t make it up into the highlands! The most beautiful part of Scotland. Aaaaw! You’ll just have to make it back there to gasp at the spiralling craggy peaks.
I’ve always wanted to go, but haven’t made it yet. The pictures are fantastic. Living in the desert you get startled by seeing so much green.
Thanks for the flashback. I visited Edinburgh back in the early/mid ’90s.
You must log in to post a comment.