Edinburgh....yeah, I spelled it wrong the other time :)

Continued from below....

Our second day in Edinburgh, we took a train to Inverness, which was a little over three hours northwest. It was a very pretty train ride through the countryside, but I think all of us were still catching up from our travels and we all took naps :) When we got there we went and asked some questions at the visitor center, walked around a bit, then ate lunch...lunch took FOREVER! I think in Europe they assume that everyone that comes to a sit down restaurant isn´t in a hurry and wants more time to sit, but we´re from the US, we´re not like that! :) So by the time we got done with our meal, we missed the bus we wanted to take to get to Loch Ness to see Nessie (she´s real ;), and the next one left at 3 but then we had to catch a bus back at 4:20 or something like that, and we would have had a grand total of 15 minutes there...then we found out bus tickets were expensive for how long we were going to be there, and a taxi was out of the question...so we didn´t get to go to Loch Ness :( Lesson learned: look ahead at times if we really want to do something so we don´t miss it! (you´d think katie and I would have learned that after two monthes... :) But we got to come home early on the train, and we had one of the best nights of our trip, just sitting back at the flat eating dinner, drinking wine and eating chocolate, and talking until midnight (when we had to let Mom and Sue get to sleep...it was way past their bedtime! :)

The next two days we used our Edinburgh pass to see the city...Katie and I hadn´t done that anywhere yet, so it was pretty cool to actually go in some museums and take some cool tours. the first day we saw a cool art exhibit of Vanity Fair photos which was really cool, and we went on a literary pub crawl of the city with two guides who talked about the great writers from Edinburgh and we walked to different pubs. But they didn't provide us with a free drink at the start, and they were kind of hard to understand, so it wasn´t as good as we thought it would be. The next day we went on three tours...yikes! We must have walked 15 miles that day at least! They were pretty interesting. We took one called Secrets of the Royal Mile which was our favorite. The Royal Mile is the mile that leads between the Edinburgh castle and the palace at the bottom of the hill and is filled with shops and restauants...it was the main street back in the day. But she told us all kinds of neat things about the place that we never would have learned. She showed us a spot outside of St. Giles cathedral where there were stones in the pavement that made the shape of a heart, which is where one of the main buildings of the city (the heart of the city) used to be. Only, that spot is the exact part of the building where the hold was where they would keep people the night before they were hanged down the street, and people used to spit on the building at the prisoners held inside...and to this day, people still spit on the heart on the street! It was cool to learn that, because the day before, a guy spit on it when we walked by and we were standing there, and I remember thinking, well that was rude...but it´s tradition! :) Katie made us go on this Edinburgh Dungeons ride which was the most unscary, ridiculously fake and cheesy fun house walk through thing, and the four of us laughed our way through it...it was just ridiculous, she owes us big time for that :)

We made some really good pasta and watched some tv (so nice to have tv in english!) The next day we slept in, and went to the Edinbugh castle, which was more of a bunch of different buildings inside of a wall enclosure...but we got to see the honors (sword, sceptor and crown) of scotland, and get rained on :) The next day we took the train along the east coast and stopped in a town that had a hike along the coast, which was just gorgeous...we hiked a couple miles out and then went back into town for some food...Mom and I tried what are called Smokies (Dad, you would have loved them) which is haddock smoked over oak chips, and it was just delicious. Sue had some great fish and chips and katie was craving soup :) We headed back on the train and went back to the flat...made dinner (it was a long train ride, the fish was just a snack :) then talked and packed up a bit since we had to leave the next day :(

The next morning we packed up, and just as we´re getting ready to make the long treck back to the train station, Edinburgh decides to give us a nice farewell and rains on us all the way there. Nice wet tennis shoes :) Oh well...got into London, left Sue :(, and Katie, Mom and I got on a train headed for Dover...we were supposed to get in there around 8pm, where we would stay the night and catch the ferry the next morning for France. Well, we were on the train for a half hour, and then we hear that there was a fatality (!!!) at the next stop and we all have to get off. So we wait an hour for a bus, bus comes, we cant fit on that one, wait some more, get on the next one, ride for another hour, it takes us to another train station, wait a half hour, catch a train to Faversham, wait for a bus, then take an hour bus ride to Dover, getting in at 10:30pm...great...so we were not happy...get to our hotel (sneak Mom in because we´re only going to be there for 6 hours and we would have had to buy another room for one more person, I don´t think so), go to bed, get up the next morning at 5:30am and walk to the ferry, there´s not a ferry at7 like the book says, so we wait and get on one at 8...get to Calle, get on a train to Lille...in Lille, find out all the train to Paris are booked for the rest of the afternoon, and there´s no way we will get to Switzerland...so we walk and look for a hostel, but it doesn´t open til 4...so we go get some lunch then go to an internet cafe (all the while lugging all our stuff around, mind you :), book some stuff, go back to the train station, decide to get to Paris to stay that night and get on a train for Bern, Switzerland that left this morning at 7:55am...so we got into Paris last night, got to our hostel around 11, went and got some pizza for a very late dinner, went to bed, up at 6:30am, got on our train, uneventful ride (very pretty scenery though), got into Bern, found our hotel (very quaint and we have very comfy beds and free internet, bike rental, and breakfast!), walked around the city a bit, and it´s now almost 9pm and I think we´ll go make dinner (we had a late lunch :)....so we have had a couple days of hard travel and not much sleep, but once we got into Switzerland and started seeing hills mountains, it was worth it!

We´ll be here for tonight and tomorrow night, then we're headed for Grindelwald which is right in the mountains, so we will get to do some GREAT hiking! (which I know Katie, especially, is very excited about ;) Not much time left :( After Grindelwald, we´re back to Paris for three nights, then in London for two, then we all fly home! Like I said before, whirlwind, but we have been able to see so much!

Even though it´s free, there is a guy that has been looking in here every couple minutes waiting for a computer, so I better go and make dinner since Katie made lunch...lots of love to everyone back home! Can't wait to see everyone!!! Hope everything is swell back there! We miss you already Susie and wish you were here!!

Love,
Sarah, Katie, and Phyll :)