Where to even begin? This morning Grace, Amanda and I made the trip to Edinburgh without any issues except for finding our way out of the train station! We made like rats, and just followed the light, and eventually got ourselves out! After that, we made our way directly to Starbucks, where they speak my language! (I've been getting in trouble here because people don't understand what a tall is or what double means...)
After feeding my addiction, we decided to find Greyfriar's Bobby, the statue of a little dog. It's a really touching story...this man's dog went with him everywhere and they were really good pals, and when the man died, the dog wouldn't leave his grave. People tried to get him to go home with them and coax him away, but he just wouldn't go. He ended up living at his master's grave for 14 years!!! We found the statue of Bobby, after wandering the same road for about 15 minutes. The dog is on a corner, up on a pedestal, and is relatively small so he's easy to miss.
Conveniently, Bobbie is really close to The Elephant House, which we went to for lunch. All three of us were unfortunately a little bit disappointed with our lunches, but we enjoyed the ambiance! After lunch, we spent a few hours shopping, browsing all the different stores. Amanda and I were particularly interested in warm weather clothing, since we're hopefully going to the Canary Islands for spring break!
After shopping, we were all pretty hungry, so we went to this Italian place on the Royal Mile. It was pretty good! I tried their carbonara, and they had this really good cheesy bread. Almost as amazing as the cheesy naan we found in Stirling.
After dinner, our real adventure began. We got to the train station in Edinburgh, and realized that the train back to Stirling wasn't going to say Stirling on it, so we were trying to find a map of the railways or something when Amanda and I heard the announcer say Stirling and platform 11, leaving in five minutes so we ran around the train station finding platform 11, and made the train! Sadly, that train was going to Glasgow, with no stops in Stirling. Oops. Luckily, we didn't have anywhere we needed to be immediately, and we all thought our mistake was pretty funny. The only problem was that it was dark, about 8 pm, and we had no idea how to get to the train station we needed to leave from (because they couldn't have made it easy for us and have the train leave from the same place). So, getting off the train we asked a girl how to get there. She said it was really easy, and then gave us really complicated directions. So, I asked a guy who was standing outside of the train station, and he gave us directions that were a bit more clear, despite the fact that we were acting a little bit crazy in reaction to being in the wrong place. We eventually found our way to the Queen Street Station, and thankfully the ticket office was open, and the man there told us we could get on any train going to Aberdeen, Alloa, or Stirling, and we would get home. I'm not sure why no one else could have given us that information, but it was very helpful!
After figuring out a timetable for ourselves, we decided that since we were already in Glasgow, we might as well have a pint or something! We first tried a bar across the street, but there was very loud and awkward karaoke going on in there, so we tried another, only to find that we were walking in on someone's private 18th birthday party, but the third time proved to be the charm! We found a bar! The bouncers carding us were really friendly and really funny, and we made friends with them pretty fast! Our drink at the bar was pretty uneventful, which was good because I'm not sure if we could have handled any more excitement! Our bouncers were sad to see us go, and told us that we needed to come back to Glasgow for a proper visit, which we agreed with! Then they called me blonde for a silly comment I made...we decided not to tell them how we had accidentally ended up in Glasgow in the first place.
We went back to the train station about an hour later to catch our ride, but we made sure to ask the conductor, who was still standing outside, if the train would stop in Stirling. All three of us had images in our minds of arriving in Aberdeen with no more trains running. He laughed at us a little bit, and told us that the train did stop in Stirling. Whew! Then he threw in a joke that he would do his best to not forget to stop there. Ha. Ha.
We did not get the memo that Car D was the party section of the train, so that's where we sat, serenaded by a group of drunk men the whole way to Stirling. When we were sitting there, laughing about how odd our night had been, this older man walked by, told us in short that he wasn't going to flirt with us like other young men, petted by head for a few seconds, and then walked on. I think that was the moment that we all really wanted to be home in our beds!
But, we had one more wee situation to experience before going home! This guy Denny, from Firth or something like that, came over to talk to us. I'm fairly certain that he had been drinking, because his sentences didn't make complete sense, and he told me that he liked my accent about three times. But he also thought that I was from New Zealand. When I told him that I was from Seattle, he asked me if people live in "the tower", and he was completely serious. I actually felt a little bit bad, because I laughed in response to his question, and he seemed really confused about why I was laughing. I informed him that no one lived in the tower. Then he got a little bit gender confused, and asked me if I would go on a date with him and be his boyfriend. He was very entertained with his mistake for the last few minutes of our trip, but we escaped without having to evade giving him our contact information.
So we made it back to Stirling finally, in a very roundabout fashion, but it was a laugh, and we definitely will be a little bit more careful about where the trains are going from now on! So, after that fun but exhausting day I am completely knackered so I'm going to sleep!
Ciao!
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