My favourite city in Europe.  After visiting for such a short time last time I had been looking for any excuse to head back there again.  Luckily, my brother is easy to convince and Marcelo had not ever been.

I figured I’d start the trip properly and actually book hostels in advance rather than the usual us turning up randomly and wandering the streets for ages.  Surprisingly, almost everything was full.  It made no sense, just a random weekend in winter.  A few phonecalls were made and I discovered there was a huge rugby game on that weekend, England vs Scotland.  Sigh.  I hate sports people.  Ok, let me clarify this.  I hate dodgy overweight guys chugging beer on the street, getting into fights and getting in your face.  “YOU RIGHT LUV, YOU’RE A PRETTY WEE THING, YOU NEED SOMEONE TO WALK YOU HOME?”.  Hell, no, kindly fuck off.  Marcelo says I am biased because the part of London we live in has the worst behaved soccer fans in the world.  I guess the rugby ones aren’t as bad as all that.  ANYWAYS.

The first hostel I booked and then immediately had a panic attack about as further research confirmed that it was voted the worst hostel in Edinburgh on 3 different websites.  Cancel that, start again.  I found another one that was the cheapest place we’d stayed in ever, and oddly enough, it was the best one.

We spent most of our time sight seeing and drinking in the gorgeous Grassmarket.  I got a chance to wander round Edinburgh castle which I hadn’t been able to do last time and we took a tour out to the Highlands to visit Loch Ness.  The funniest part of the trip was taking another ghost tour around and underground.  My brother is scared of his own shadow, I swear.  To be fair, we’re both as bad as each other.  We don’t do well with scary jumpy-outy things.  Turns out the tour we went on is one of the only ones that pays a guy £10 to suddenly jump out and scare the piss out of tourists.  Aside from that, the tour was quite fun and I love the stories and history this city has.  My brothers friend volunteered to hold a candle in a creepy corner whilst the tour guy told us stories.  She woke up the next morning with a ghost story of her own, as did I, AGAIN, one of the next nights.  I swear that hostel was haunted.  I swear that whole city is haunted.

Our day trip out to Loch Ness was fun.  We got on a boat and spent a good half hour peering over the side for Nessie.  We also met Hamish, the cutest cow in the world.

On a side note, OMG SCOTTISH ACCENTS.  I WANT TO TAKE THEM HOME AND KEEP THEM FOREVER AND EVER.  Gav, if you’re reading this, don’t get creeped out.  Hur.

MOAR Edinburgh Photos