day four: edinburgh

got up at 11:30am, not feeling the best, but it's been worse back in chicago. J had a terrible headache and N is doing surprisingly fine. it was brought to my attention that last night i drank at least 16 beers. N had at least 17 and 5 shots of jack. it was one crazy day.

today we got up late and were even slower to get out. we were out until 1pm after everyone took showers and got ready to go. J didn't even come out. wasn't feeling well at all. she was planning on meeting us at 3pm at the parliament building. so N and i went to a burger place (except i left my map at the B&B so had to run into a nearby hotel to grab another one). we grabbed some burgers and rested up before we walked to the parliament building. it was the first time we didn't have beers with a meal on this trip. J arrived a few minutes late, but we decided instead of heading to the castle. we would climb the giant hill called hollyrood behind hollyroodpalace
. it was a good 45 minute hike up some pretty steep grass in order for us to get up to the top. we had some amazing views of the city and the sea from there before climbing back down.

after the hard hike we made our way to the castle, but got tired and decided to take a quick cab ride.
unfortunately we got to castle a half hour too late so we were turned away. instead we made our way to the whisky store for some scotch. we did a tasting of four different scotches and ended up getting something fruity for our friend in london and a super smokey one for ourselves. it's smoked with peat so it's very intense. at this point J still wasn't feeling well so she went back to sleep. N and i headed out for the train station to see if we wanted to get train tickets to get down to london. we decided to hold off until we knew how much things cost by taking a flight down. due to some maintenance issues the 4.5 hour direct train ride would be a 6 hour, 2 train and a bus ride affair down. i think we still might take it, for the experience and to see the british countryside.

after the train station we headed back to the area we had dinner the night before and had some food a local pub. i had steak pie and N had onion rings, haggis fritters, soup and fish and chips. after dinner we head back to south bridge to have drinks at a live music bar. the first band that was up had some great cover songs and we just sat around listening to music and throwing back some beers. we were pretty tired from the day before and the hiking (even though we sleep 11 hours last night). we decided to head back a little after 10am. on our way back N got hungry again and we found a pizza place that's supposed to be the best italian thin crust pizza in edinburgh. he got two pizzas to go. when we got back J was up and feeling better and had a couple slices of pizza. N had an entire pizza to himself. J and i had most of the other one.

tmw we're saying bye to J and checking out the castle quickly before we jump on a train (hopefully not one that has 2 connections) to london.