Day 119: Edinburgh, Scotland

Voltaire once said: "We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation"
  
Apparently Voltaire was a complete idiot.  Or really liked him some beer.


Today I had to wake up at 4:30 in the morning.  I felt pretty terrible, but this is probably because I got like four hours of sleep.  Junior drove me about an hour so I could get on a train from  Roosendaal to Schiphol. My travel went really well, and I got to the airport in plenty of time.  I had to wait for about an hour, but it was alright.

First one of these I have seen in 4 months.  Didn't miss it.

This is why Dutch is the most ridiculous language on the planet.

My flight was good, and only lasted about an hour.  I went through immigration, and Megan met me at the airport.  We headed into town, but we needed to wait a few hours before we could check in to our guest house, so we went to a pub to get lunch.  It was good, but this sure ain't France.  Or the Netherlands.  Or even Belgium.  I did try Haggas.  It was fine, but I wouldn't want to eat it. 

These sausages were actually ok. 

Contains: water, apple pulp, sugar, malt vinegar, cane molasses, thickener, tomato paste, salt, acetic acid, spices, onion powder, preservative, colouring(caramel paste).  Yeah.  They don't call it Brown sauce for nothing...

After lunch, we went to a little place called the French Fancies, and got some decent food.  I had a lemon tart, which was great, and a cafe.  It was a great end to the meal.  Once we finished, we had killed enough time and we went to the flat where were are staying.  They lady who rents it out was very nice, and it is a nice room.

This is our building.  Ours is on the top floor, just before the bell tower.

Here is most of the room.  There is one other smaller room behind me. 

Once we were settled, Megan went out to get our tickets to the New Year's party tonight, and I stayed back to shower, and practice and maybe take a nap.  I took a shower, which was nice, and then I got back to the room and felt really tired, and ended up accidentally taking a nap.  I woke up a couple of times, but wasn't feeling any better, so I kept sleeping.  When Megan came back, I got up and discovered that I felt horrible.  I was achy and my muscles just hurt, and my stomach was upset, and I generally just felt awful.  Finally, it was pretty late, and we needed dinner, and had to be in the event by 11pm, so we left at around 8.  I didn't have much of an appetite, and almost all of the kitchens at places we went were closed.  Finally, we found a pizza place that was still open.  I just got some pasta with butter.  I managed to keep it all down, and it was good that I ate.

We spent our New Year's at the Edinburgh Hogmanay.  It is just a giant street festival with concerts and DJs and lots and lots of beer and food.  I would say a majority of the participants were pretty drunk by about 10pm, inside and outside of the gates.  It seems to be the the accepted method is get a 2 liter bottle of your favorite soda, mix in your favorite liquor, and stumble about the streets drinking it. 

He knew that until France had its own Angus Steak Bars, it would never compare to the cultural utopia that is Scotland.

This is what the street generally looked like  inside the gates.  Voltaire strove for, but was never able to achieve, the philosophical intellect possessed by these great minds. 

Here's us under one of the chateaus of Edinburgh.

People gathering to watch the fireworks.

The fireworks were really incredible.  They were a great show, but the cool thing was that one would never be allowed to stand as close to the fireworks as we were.  At times, they were literally exploding directly over our heads.  It was pretty amazing.

They were loud.

These ones were red.

Once the fire works ended, I was pretty much at the end of my line, so we had to head home.  I'm glad we did because it started raining.  When we got back, I spent about 30 minutes huddled in front of a space heater while poor Megan tried to figure out how to cool herself off more.  I am really hoping I do not get more sick.  SPOILER ALERT: When you read tomorrow's blog post, I will be more sick.