Edinburgh With Robyn

So I left for Edinburgh last Saturday, the 28th, and I arrived safely around noon on the 29th after an exhausting 12 hours of travel without having slept or ate. Robyn showed me around the city and we hung out in the meadows watching people play soccer, frisbee, and just hanging out in general. Some of her work friends came and I was introduced to them.(The Meadows)

(View of Robyn's Apartment Building from the Meadows)

After spending some relaxing time in the Meadows a bunch of us headed over to watch a 5-aside "Football" game of some friends of Robyn's friend. We were great fans and got into chirping the other team. We met some of the guys playing and there were two aussie brothers and we made friends with the younger one. Once back in the apartment we made some dinner and after nearly falling asleep standing up a couple times Robyn finally let me go to sleep after having been up for 35 hours straight.
The next day Robyn had to work so I took the opportunity to sleep in and then when she came back after work we climbed a little big of Arthur's seat...or the crag...not sure of the difference really.
watched a movie and ate some dinner and then it was time to get ready for Beltane! I have decided that the pagan religion is not for me after attending this festivity. Basically its the pagan welcoming of spring and theres this whole story of a May Queen and Stag King or GreenMan (he has numerous names..basically just the May Queen's consort) and at the end of the festival they are married and are sposed to have sex to symbolize the fertility of spring. yeah..not my cup of tea. But the festival was really cool and there were lots of hippies who were part of it painted different colors and dressed up and they ran around dancing and stuff. The red people were the crazy ones and at the end there was this really cool fire dance thing with whips and balls/chains all lit on fire and they'd dance with them and stuff, it was very different from anything you'd see around Boston!

(A red girl waiting for everything to begin...they wear the cloaks because theres nothing but a loinclothe underneath...)

(Can't really tell but this was where all the fire dances were happening)

(Some more painted people, all these people were painted at Robyn's flat because her flatmate was part of it)

The next day Robyn had to work again and since I got up at a more decent hour I was able to walk around the city for a few hours and just look at all the sites. I tried to go to a few museums but most were closed do to some city wide museum-maintenance thing or something. So I just walked around and took pictures of different old buildings and parts of the city.

The Crag

The Queen's Palace (taken from the crag..well a little bit up it anyway)

A look at the walkway that runs along the park that stretches along one of the main roads, Princes Road (where all the shopping is...across the street on the right)
South bridge which connects new town to old town (the buildings you can see are part of old town)A shot down the Royal Mile or High Street, its the touristy road of the city
So stereotypical...I love it, obviously this was on the royal mile

So Robyn and I then met up and we were going to go to this famous chocolate shop called plaisir du chocolat but it was closed by the time Robyn got out of work so instead we went to a pub called the Last Drop which is where prisoners on death row were taken for their last drink before execution. It was good. She made me eat this stuff called haggis which is basically all parts of the pig that cant be eaten and its all ground up and spices are added...basically sausage but its prepared like ground beef. It wasn't bad, apparently scots love it.

In the pub, sorta nervous about the rope in the background...shot of the pub from the outside

We had a chill night watching pirates of the carribean 2 (to get ready for the third which premiers soon) and then this morning we got up really early (ugh 8 30 is not a happy time for me) and grabbed starbucks together, did a bit of shopping on Princes St, and then Robyn had to go get her national insurance number while I did some more damage to the bank account. This afternoon I plan on going to some of the museums, although after so much shopping I might be a little too wiped out for culture.
This weekend we go to oxford to visit Katie and Mathjis, theres a fancy black tie gala that we get to be all dudded up for so that should be exciting. And Monday work starts, so although the vacation in Edinburgh has been great, its a bit shorter than I would have liked.