I give up

As you can clearly see, this is my first post in about a week and a half. I intentionally did not write last week because I really wanted people to post comments to my last posting. But, as Anuj so intuitively pointed out, my friends/readers are clearly more motivated to respond to stories about drinking than they are about serious, "real-world" topics. So I've come to grips with it.

Anyways, so last weekend was a long weekend here in Europe. I hadn't traveled anywhere since I arrived in early April, and frankly I was getting sick of all the people back home asking me where I've been traveling to since I got here. So, after looking at airfares and weather forecasts, I finally settled on Edinburgh, Scotland.

Since I was traveling by myself, I made the money-saving decision to stay at a hostel. After picking up Lonely Planet Scotland from the local bookstore here by my office, I settled on a hostel that sounded like it would be relatively social. I figured that way I'd have a chance to meet some people, thus avoiding the depressing scenario of drinking Scotch all by myself.

So Saturday morning, after a relatively sober night of sleep, I woke up around 6am, ready to head to the airport and begin my first-ever trip by myself. Of course, I got to the airport ridiculously early, and, despite the fact that it was around 8am, decided I might as well let the games begin, so I headed to one of the airport bars to drink, of course, Scotch. All this really did though was offset the coffee I had earlier, and thus enable me to sleep like a baby on the 90 minute flight.

So I arrived in Edinburgh awake and refreshed, and hopped on the shuttle that connects the airport to the center (still not 'centre') of the city. As we drove by the Edinburgh Castle for the first time, I was absolutely mesmerized. I had seen pictures before, but it was still an amazing sight to see. In fact, as I was looking at the Castle for probably the 30th time on Sunday night, it was no less beautiful than it was the first time I saw it - that's how awesome and picturesque it is. Probably has something to do with the fact that it's built on top of a big hill and thus from many of the streets of Edinburgh, you're actually looking up at the Castle.

Overall, it's just a tremendously beautiful city. I lucked out in that the weather was great all weekend, and I can imagine it being pretty bleak if it's cold/cloudy/raining. Rather than going into detail-by-detail about the trip, I'll just summarize the sights I saw in the order I recommend them:

The Castle. You could probably spend an entire day here if you want to check everything out in detail. Even I, far from the avid sightseer, spent a solid 2 1/2 or so hours here. I think the most interesting part was, as I toured the barracks where they housed POWs back in the day, I learned that, in addition to the standard meat, cheese and bread, POWs received a daily allotment of 2 pints of beer. Not too shabby. Also, if you're there at 1 o'clock, be sure to check out the firing of the 1 o'clock gun. Skip the audio guide though. Total waste of money.

The Scotch Whisky (no 'e' the way they spell it) Heritage Centre (i'm only spelling 'centre' this way b/c it's the official name of the place). I guess this isn't really a must-see unless you're into scotch/whiskey, which I'm not so much, but liquor is liquor. There's a tour where they go through the whole distillation/aging process, and at the end, if you pay a little extra, you get to taste 4 different scotches - one from each of the major scotch-producing regions in Scotland. There's also a store with all sorts of brands/ages of scotch. I'm not even a huge scotch fan, but I still managed to spend £75 on the stuff, mostly for my friends back in the US. Shashank - that Oban stuff better be good.

Museum of Scotland. Huge museum that, if you're into history/museums, could take a whole day or maybe even longer. I'm really not so into that stuff though, so I made like Lens Crafters and was in and out in about an hour.

Calton Hill. It's this 'hill' that's really not all that difficult to climb to the top of, and very overrated. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more had I gone at sunrise or sunset, but at 10 in the morning it was pretty damn unimpressive. You get some good views of the city, but nothing that you can't get from the Castle. I guess maybe it could be kinda romantic, but since I went up there like I go everywhere in life - by myself - I didn't really get that aspect of it.

Other than that, I just did a lot of wandering around. I actually enjoy just roaming more than I do a lot of the sights, since you can really get a good feel for the city and its people by just blending in and observing. People overall in Edinburgh were really nice, and based on the limited time I was there, the girls are much better looking than in London.

Oh - and last but not least, I did end up drinking Scotch by myself, but only at the Scotch history tour place. Unfortunately, the hostel was nowhere near as social as the Lonely Planet described, so I didn't get a chance to really experience the nightlife, though just based on walking around on Saturday night, it seems it's very much the pub scene. I did enjoy watching Lakers-Suns Game 4 at the bar next to my hostel on Sunday night. Way to blow a 3-1 lead Lake show. Go Clippers!