In our hostel we have 8 beds again. This place is much nicer than Dublin’s hostel, I actually think it’s my favorite hostel so far on this trip. We have made friends with Raya, a 22 year old from New Zealand who lives in England nannying. She actually has a really cool story, especially in regards to traveling and what she is doing. Her Dad is from Boston, giving her duel citizenship so she completed University in Virginia. She’s very nice and has an insanely cool story, much more than I’ve explained now.

Yesterday the three of us woke up early to go to the farmers market. The receptionist at the hostel said there is one not too far on Saturdays that she loves so we decided that it sounded fun. We walk all the way to this farmers market at 9:30 in the morning only to find ourselves facing maybe 20 booths on each side of a walk way. Needless to say we were kind of let down. We walked through it, looked at everything and decided to go for breakfast. We found some pub and the food was quite good.

We decided to go do the free walking tour but when we got there, there were SO many people. They turned us away because there was just too many people. We decided we would try a different day and began to walk around the city again. There doesn’t seem too much to do here but shop. There are tours and such too, but the prices rip a hole in your pocket 1) because it’s touristy season and 2) because it’s all in pounds. And pounds are horrible.

We wander into this store called Primark. Oh, Primark. I think this store was placed on Earth because somebody hates me and makes me want to buy great things. This store would be so bad for me in the U.S. it’s like target meets Forever 21. It’s mostly clothes but cheap and so cute! We spent time in there, Raya left to meet up with some other friends and then Holly and I looked up some info about tours.

We all eventually meet back up at the hostel around 4. We go to get info about a highlands tour but we couldn’t decide which one. Loch Ness is popular because of the Loch Ness monster, but you can’t actually do much. Holly and I eventually settled on a West highlands tour for Monday. Unfortunately Raya will be leaving Monday. The three of us decided to do Mary Kings Close which is an underground tour of Edinburgh, the history a bit, visuals of how Edinburgh use to be and supposedly a bit scary! We booked it for 9:30 that night.

We had time to kill so we started to look for food when it started to rain. Now we were running around Scotland in the rain. We were looking to grab a bite to eat before the tour and live music, but we found the closest form of shelter instead and ate at a place called Maggie Dickons. We left there, headed back to the hostel to get pants and jackets because we were all in shorts as it was hot that morning and underground tours sound cold.

The tour wasn’t what we expected in terms of fear. The lady who recommended it to us made it seem much scarier. This just told of old stories and one ghost story about a girl named Annie who tugs on people’s shirts sometimes. Because we learned that and because Raya is a little bit of a nervous nelly, Holly and I later tugged on Raya’s shirt which actually turned out to be quite funny. She got a bit of a scare before realizing it was us. We weren’t able to take pictures on this tour, so I’ve got nothing to show!

It was really cool, learning about how the Black Plague worked and how it affected Scotland. There was some cool stuff but not what we had expected. That’s okay though, we had fun.

Since earlier we had struggled so much to find live music, we decided now it was only 10:30, so we would go grab a pint and try again. We were wandering around confused a bit because there didnt seem to be any people anywhere near us. Not like the night Holly and I came in. But it was a Saturday night. Confused, Holly asked a guy who was a bike taxi who pointed us to a different direction.

Boy we found people.

It was mostly clubs and dancing, not what we wanted. Everything here says they have live music but no place actually did. It made me miss Ireland so much. As we are walking past the place where we ate before headed down the hill, a guy comes up to Raya, from behind kind of places his hand on her back and says “hello miss, I’m not going to hurt you” very nicely and of course Raya jumps, Holly and I look over like what is going on to see the same guy jump when Raya jumped. We were all still kind of walking when this happened so it kind of looked like a movie how it all happened. I know typing this out, it sounds much creepier than it was. We were on a main street with loads of people around.

Back to my story, so I make the comment of “well that wasn’t creepy!” And we are joined by another guy. Everyone is kind of laughing now, the guy keeps apologizing, sorry for scaring Raya. We are calling him creepy as he is explaining he just wanted to talk to her. We keep walking down this hill and they’re asking what we’re doing and if we wanna join them to the club.

We talk about how we don’t know them so they take time to tell us their names and we spend about 15 minutes while they try to guess our names. They got Holly’s randomly first guess first try but took forever to get mine and Raya’s, clearly. But long story that sounds creepy and isn’t, short, we had just met Jordan and Stephen. Probably the two funniest Irishmen in Scotland. Yep, they were Irish.

They’re 20 and 20 something, I can’t remember, living in Scotland for a bit doing electrical work. The five of us ended up going back up the hill to an Irish pub for a pint. This place was packed! We had a blast. Met two girls from Texas, cowboy boots and all. The DJ played born in the USA and I’m pretty sure everyone who wasn’t born in the USA knew the words better than us Americans.

The DJ played loads of fun music and everyone was just dancing around. There were random people singing with us, dancing goofy, and Holly even got the two Irishman and some other random guy to sing along and to us a Westlife song. Now, Holly and I have no idea who Westlife is but from what we have gathered its basically an old British boy band equivalent to the backstreet boys.

It was a blast. No body cared how they look in this pub. Not a soul. After that place closed we ended up going to the club for a bit. Mind you, we were still in what we went to our tour in. So leather

Jackets, pants, cardigans. Raya was just in shorts and a t shirt! We stood out but it was good fun.

Walking home Stephen and Justin were asking if everyone was happy and we said yes. Then I ask if he’s happy. Just replies with “Yes I’m happy. We’re Irish, we’re always happy.” What a great life philosophy.