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| Graveyard in Edinburgh |
My friends from SU were all studying in England, so they
took a train to Edinburgh together. I bought the cheapest possible plane
tickets from Belfast to Edinburgh. My flight left very early on
Friday—departing at 7-something in the morning.
This wouldn’t have been such a problem if I lived in Belfast. However, since
I was about two hours away from Belfast by bus, I didn’t see any affordable way
I’d be able to get from Coleraine to the airport on time Friday morning. I
figured the best plan of action would be to head into Belfast Thursday night,
stay at a hostel, and then head to the airport early in the morning via an
Airport Express bus.
This started off well enough. With the directions I printed
out, I was able to easily walk from the Belfast bus station to the hostel. I
checked in and went to KFC for a quick dinner, then headed back to the hostel
Things took a turn for the worst when I was trapped in the hostel bathroom
because the door was jammed. I had all of my stuff with me when I
went to the bathroom, including the brochure listing the phone number of the
hostel’s front desk. I called, and they were able to get the door open. Things didn’t get better from there.
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| Edinburgh! |
I tried to fall asleep
early, but I’m a natural night owl and had a schedule that skewed towards
staying up late while I was abroad since my classes didn’t start until noon. I
accepted that I probably just wouldn’t be sleeping and decided to hang out in
one of the hostel’s lounges until I had to leave for the airport. Probably because I’m an inexperienced
traveler, and also a very cautious person, I was planning on getting to the
airport very early by catching a bus that left before 4 a.m. I thought I could
stay on my laptop in the lounge until check-out (since check-out was 24 hours),
but eventually, the person at the front desk told me I would have to leave the
lounge. This wouldn’t have been a problem if, back in my room, I hadn’t dropped
the key in the dark (someone had already been sleeping) and thought—quite
foolishly—that I didn’t have to bother finding it since I didn’t plan on
staying in my room.
I figured the easiest thing to do would be leaving the
hostel and taking an earlier bus to the airport. I was making a big assumption
that the bus station would still be open at night! When I got to the station,
it was closed. If I wanted to take the next Airport Express bus, I would be
waiting outside for quite some time, I wasn’t too keen on doing that by myself
alone in Belfast. There were various
taxis on the street where I’d be
waiting. A driver offered to take me to the airport. I knew it was going to be
expensive, but I ended up accepting the offer. The thought of waiting at the bus station by
myself made me feel too anxious.
By the time I got to the airport (much earlier than I had
planned!), I felt completely stressed. I had ended up paying about thirty
pounds for a one-way trip by taxi when the bus would’ve been about 14 pounds
for both ways. I was also tired. I remember sitting in the airport and writing
out a prayer on my laptop about how horrible and overwhelmed I was feeling. This semester it’s easy to idealize all the
time I spent traveling, since I can’t do it now, but traveling alone can be
really draining.
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| St. Giles Cathedral |
Fortunately, I had such a great weekend at Edinburgh that it
was worth all the turmoil! After a very short flight from Belfast to Edinburgh
(less than 45 minutes), I arrived at the Edinburgh airport. As I left to catch
a bus from the airport to the inner city, I passed through doors that said
“Haste ye back,” the Scottish equivalent of “Come back soon.” This was my first trip outside of Ireland,
and that small detail helped impress on me the fact that I was in a different
country. I wasn’t aware, then, how much this weekend would convince me to “haste…
back” to Edinburgh if I could.
I took a bus to the train station where my friends would be
arriving. I was so thrilled when I got a first glimpse of them with their bags.
I hadn’t seen any of them since May, and it was so nice to see familiar faces
in the midst of immersion into a completely new place.
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| Scott Monument |
We were all impressed with the beauty of Edinburgh as we
headed to our hostel. I’d personally never heard much about Edinburgh, except
that it was the capital of Scotland, so I was surprised it was so gorgeous.
That day we ended up seeing a fair amount of sights, such as the Scott Monument
and Edinburgh Castle. We walked the Royal Mile which is the big tourist street
in Edinburgh. One of my favorite things we saw on the Royal Mile was St. Giles
Cathedral. It was very beautiful, but
unfortunately, I couldn’t take pictures inside. We also did some shopping. I
have a peplum top that I bought for 8 pounds that will always remind me of
Scotland!
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| Edinburgh Castle |
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| Celtic cross outside Edinbugh Castle |
We had told ourselves we were going to stay out late that
night, but we were all too exhausted. We went to a pub called The Tron for
dinner and had drinks with our meal, but headed back to the hostel pretty
early. Most of us fell asleep around 11 p.m.!
I suppose that’s what happens when you don’t sleep at all prior to a
trip. It also helped that the room in our hostel was so nice and toasty. We’d
been able to get a great deal on a private room, just for the four of us.
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| Plaque about J.K. Rowling |
The next day, we went on a literary tour of Edinburgh. The day
before we had seen a sign advertising the tour, which met outside a museum
about Scottish writers. All four of us were Creative Writing majors, so this
was perfect. Nobody showed up for the tour besides us, but it was still a fun
experience. The tour guide, an older Scottish writer, had a colorful
personality and led us to parts of Edinburgh we wouldn’t have wandered to on
our own, as he pointed out sights s like cafes where J.K. Rowling wrote and the
school Arthur Conan Doyle attended. We also checked out the Museum of Childhood that day, which
contained a lot of different toys and creepy dolls, and a free history museum.
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| Museum of Childhood |
After much indecisive wandering, we ended up back at the
Tron for dinner since we’d liked it the previous night. Afterwards, we intended
to find another nearby pub to go to for drinks, but most of the pubs looked
really crowded or were a demographic
that just wasn’t right for us. We ended up at the Tron for the third time that
weekend. Edinburgh had been very cold while we were there—much colder
than I expected—so that didn’t really help motivate us to explore as fully as
we could. At one point there were even flurries!
It was sad having to leave the next day. There was definitely
still so much to see in Edinburgh that I hadn’t seen, and of course, it was a
bummer saying goodbye to my friends again. All in all, though, it was a great
weekend and totally worth the stress to get there. Edinburgh made its mark as
some place I would love to return to one day.
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