May 8
We flew from Kathmandu to Doho, Qatar for our connection on Qatar Airlines. We passed Dubai and could see the giant palm tree from the plane. As we lifted off on our way to London, we saw all of the renovations that Qatar is doing to he read to host the World Cup in four years. We arrived in London and then went through immigration. We took a bus to another terminal and took a flight to Edinburg. Finally, we were done flying. We took a bus from the airport to downtown Edinburgh and then walked to our hostel. Our hostel was really cool. It was a huge hostel right across the street from the famous Edinburgh Castle. We checked in and took some showers. We then got burgers and a beer at a pub down the street. We then walked the area and down the Main Street in the old town called the Royal Mile. It was one mile from the castle to the parliament. We walked up a hill overlooking the city and got a nice view. We ate dinner at a kabob place and then went back to our hostel to meet people and do a pub crawl. It didn’t get dark until 10:30 pm so we drank while it was light out. It was weird because we were used to it getting dark by 7:00 pm. We went to a bar called Frankenstein’s. It was a huge bar with electronic people moving around on the ceiling. It was neat. We then went to a chill bar with a pool table and darts. We met people from all over, which was nice. We went to one more bar before Matt and I called it a night. We were all messed up because of the time change. It was good we stayed out tonight though so we weren’t messed up much anymore. I like Edinburgh so far.
May 9
We woke up early and went to the castle. It was pretty big and impressive. It was right in the middle of the city on a hill. We then walked to the new town to rent a car for a week. It was £84 for an axiomatic car per day. This was not what we were expecting at all. We decided to scratch the road trip Scotland idea and go to the train station. The train tickets and bus tickets were also just as much money for the places we wanted to go around Scotland. We scratched that and then started looking into tours. Our hostel ran one that looked the cheapest by far. We went back to the hostel to ask and got lucky that the exact tour we wanted was leaving tomorrow and three were spaces available. We booked it and were so relieved because we don’t know what we would have done otherwise. The tour was three days and you go to Lochness (Inverness) and Isle of Skye. Isle of Skye was the main thing that we wanted to see but Lochness was number two. It worked our really well and was much cheaper than doing it on our own. We went to dinner at a place similar to Chipotle and walked around the area. We went through a really nice park with cool apartments on the edge. The apartments were modern with glass but built into an old castle-looking building. We walked through an area where people used to be hung, but is now bars and restaurants. At night, we hung out in our hostel in the common
and then chilled in our hostel at night.