Never Confuse Having a Life with Having a Career: July 2011

Weeeew I'm on a bus right now, just rolling into Oslo Norway in the next 30 minutes, and there's some wifi on the bus, so figured I'd write a little spiel on what's been happening. Normally I'd be riding a train into Oslo at 8:45 pm tonight, BUT apparently the Eurail timetable has not noticed that there isn't any train leaving from Goteberg Sweden at the time that is listed, so I was forced to scramble to find another way to Oslo.

Since I last actually posted, I was wrapping up my first Danish tour, and off to lovely Scotland. I arrived in Edinburgh and quickly found a bus over to the inner city. As I got off the bus and was starting to walk up toward my hostel, I witnessed a rather hilarious and random street fight between a bunch of young teenagers that appeared to be in some school trip. The poor chaperone had no chance to control all these kids, and I was walking basically right through their little brawl, having a good laugh at the ridiculousness of seeing 15 year old girls punching 15 year old guys, and local business owners coming out of their shops and telling the kids to get the hell out of the way!

All in all, good fun, got to the hostel, and caught up on some sleep! Ended up meeting my mate Pancho from Regina and his buddy Derek Elliott the next morning at the hostel, and of course Pancho had already planned out our evening, saying we were going to go do a pub crawl, so that was our plan. We weren't too sure of how good the crawl would be, so we hung out at the first bar where it was to begin from, and waited to see what kind of a group was on the crawl. Eventually we decided that we could probably join, since it looked like a fun group of people. Our hostel allowed for us to have a 5 pound discount on the price of entry, but we weren't sure if it was for that particular pub crawl, so I went outside first and told them I was staying there,a and got my discount. Once I got back inside and let the guys know that it worked, Pancho went out next and asked for the discount shortly after myself, which started to make the tour guides a bit suspicious. Then, Derek went out after Pancho, and the one guy made a funny remark about how we had some neat little scam going on. Derek wasn't too sure what to make of it, and had an awkward laugh, then he came in and described to us what happened. I guess the tour guides just figured we were using one key card from the hostel and sharing it amongst ourselves for the discount!

Enjoying some Scotch with the boys before our pub crawl

Rainy Edinburgh

Anyways, we hit up the pub crawl and met this hilarious old dude named Art, who was about 55 years old and on a pub crawl with basically a bunch of 20 something back packers, so it was quite an odd sight. At the first bar, they had 2 pound jaggerbombs, so most people bought 2 at most, and being the goofball that I am, I bought ten of them. I obviously didn't have them all, but it was a good way to meet a few new friends by giving out a shot to some random ppl. We tried really hard to get Art to get in on one, but he said he wouldn't, and said that it would be his last stop on the pub crawl since he was so much older than us all. Somehow, we managed to convince the poor guy to actually tag along with us to the next 3 bars, and got him pretty drunk. Things became a bit foggy around the 3rd bar, although I do remember the one American girl that I bought a jaggerbomb for earlier in the evening being quite into me, and someone kept buying rounds of beer, so I didn't end up spending a single dollar after the Jaggerbomb bar. I later found out it was Derek going crazy with the rounds being bought, so I owed him. The night ended fairly funny as the American girl and I were trying to find a hotel, but they kept shutting us down cause we were too drunk probably, so we just parted ways. Of course I got extremely lost trying to find my way back home, and didn't make it back until 5:30 am.

The next day I was the first one up, so I had to go wake up the boys, even though I had the least amount of sleep. We went and found some cheap breakfast, then rolled on to the Rosslyn Chapel. The bus ride was kind of hot and crappy, as the hangover started to kick in, but we fought through it and arrived at the chapel. Now this is a point where karma will probably come back and kick my ass, but the queue to get in was through a narrow gateway and some older woman kind of forced her way past me and through the line, so I just followed her in, thinking she knew the best way.. I thought the other people in the line were just grabbing maps of the area, so I didn't think twice about stopping, but then I was inside the entry point and had to wait for Pancho and Derek to get in. They came walking in and called me an asshole for not paying the 8 pound entrance fee....oops...but I guess I saved myself some money he he. We later found out that the chapel is privately owned by some wealthy Earl, and I'm pretty sure his family was just charging people to enter it, and I believe entering churches should be by donation, not a flat fee.

Roslyn Chapel

Funny Statue that someone threw a pylon onto

Anyways, we toured around the chapel, which is really a beautiful place, as it has many intricate carvings and is supposedly a portal to another gateway according to some lore. The holy grail is also rumoured to be buried beneath the chapel, as described in the Da Vinci code. Anyways, it was a pretty neat site, but easily seen within an hour and a half or less. We then hopped back on the bus and headed back to Edinburgh, where we then decided to go walk up to Arthur's Seat. Before we began our walk, I really needed to use a toilet, so I was walking around looking for a public one, when I saw a huge sign on the side of one building so I went running over there only to find the sign actually said "To Let", but from a distance I thought it said "Toilet". For those of you who don't know, in the UK rather than saying "For Rent" they say "To Let". Anyways, the guys busted my balls pretty hard over that one, and I had a pretty good laugh at my stupidity as well!

So anyways, we walked over and started our hike up to Arthur's Seat. It was a very nice walk and some great views of Edinburgh, as it's the highest peak around the city. I had to push the pace a bit for the boys, as they were pretty slow climbers, but we made it up to the top, and then decided to take a different way down, which ended up being rather treacherous, especially considering I wasn't wearing proper hiking footwear, but we made it down alright. I didn't want to wait for the guys, as they were monkeying around taking some more photos, and I just felt like getting back and having a shower, but one my way back into town I found a Mexican place called Pancho Villas, that we had walked by earlier in the day. I decided to sit down and have a beer, and wait for the guys to walk past, which they of course did, so we all sat down and had a good Mexican feast at Pancho's favourite new restaurant.

Scottish Parliament, notice the creepy cloud face above it? Cool!

Arthur's Seat

Nice little Lake on the hike to Arthur's Seat

Pushing the pace too fast for the boys apparently, drink some more beer!

View of Edinburgh from up top

The ridiculous way down I thought would be fun to take....definitely not!

Arthur Seat Planking!

Got really windy up top eh

After dinner, we went to meet up with the pub crawl organizers to try and remember the night, as Derek had left his jacket at one of the bars, and we couldn't remember how to get to any of them. We eventually got to all the places, and found that the jacket wasn't anywhere to be found, so we just started to joke around and blame old Art from the night before, saying that he just wanted to remember us cause we were all so awesome ha ha. I did give Art my blog address, so I hope he reads this and has a chuckle.

During our quest for Derek's jacket, one fairly funny sight happened in front of Frankenstein's bar, as Derek knocked on the door, and some girls answered and told him the manager wasn't there, so they couldn't look in his office for the jacket and shut the door. Just after this, there was a random group of 5 ppl walking by and some drunk guy bumped into the one guy in their group, and all of a sudden they were having a full on fight.The one guy threw two of the signs that were in front of the Frankenstein bar advertising their menu and drink specials, and then they started at the blows. The guy from the group was throwing these hilariously terrible high kicks at the other guy, and I think maybe one total punch in the fight connected....it was so so so awful to watch these two fighting, but then all of a sudden the initiator tried to shake the guy's hand, he refused, then the initiator just ran off down the street, and then the cops showed up.

At this point, a guy came out of Frankenstein wearing a nice white shirt and was seeing what happened, and Derek asked him if he was the manager, which he was, so the guy went in to try and find Derek's jacket but they couldn't find it. It was pretty funny how the girls had told him 10 minutes earlier there was no manager there, but clearly there was. Anyways, Pancho made a funny joke about the fight, asking if perhaps the one guy "didn't like the new Frankenstein menu", as that was the sign he initially threw at the other guy.

Anyways, we didn't get up to a whole lot else, just rested up for our early morning departure onto the Highlands tour. We ended up hitting up the William of Wallace monument, Glencoe, the Fairy Glen, Loch Ness, did some hiking, stopped for a picnic in a small town that ended up getting rained out, going to a Brew Pub, and going on a fishing boat for several hours, catching scallops and eating them raw, right out of the Loch, yum! We also saw a castle, and the 5 of us Canadians on the tour ended up being the only ones who were brave enough to actually go swimming in Loch Ness to search for Nessie, but without any avail. Our final stop before getting back to Edinburgh

Some of the other highlights of the trip included learning about two new cards in the Sociables game, the Stephen Hawking and the Troll card. Two very hilarious additions that made for a fun game. We also had a pretty sweet bonfire party with the owner of the hostel, who was absolutely crazy, and that bonfire and numerous drinks lead to my fun night with one of the Canadian girls on the tour, which lead to another Shave Day! ha ha ha. Of course that last party night also resulted in Pancho getting lost in some random room upstairs while trying to find the toilet, then waking up and not knowing where he was or where his clothing was, so he took some clothing he found on the floor and walked back downstairs to our room. Also, since I only had like 2.5 hours sleep and was awaken to find out that the van was about to leave, I managed to forget both my iPod and sleeping bag at the hostel, damn!

Pancho loves being on a boat looking like a bug

William of Wallace monument

The Hairy Coo...chicks dig him

The start of our picnic...all looks nice for now

Andddd then the rain came

Glencoe, site of a big battle between the Campbells and McDonalds

More Glencoe

War Monument

Lake that resembles the UK

McCrae Castle I think?

I've got a big gun, don't make me use it!

View of our hostel from the fishing boat

High Real Estate Prices...people are just dying to get in!

Our fresh catch on the fishing boat...lots of interesting critters

Starfish...Kari Alexander ;)

Crabs!! These guys crush the Scallops shells without any effort..crazy strong

Cool blue lobster

Isle of Skye view

River where if you dip your face into it, you're supposed to get endless beauty

Nice Waterfalls

Another Beautiful Loch

Highland Planking!

Kilt Rock!

Apparently the middle of cliffs break apart and cause you to fall?

Sheep! For a desperate Scotsman I suppose!

Hiking in the Highlands

More Highlands

In the Ferry Glen

Worst Plank in the World!

Crazy Canadians running into Loch Ness to search for Nessie...guess who's wearing the Speedos!

Hundreds of Clansmen lost their lives at the battle of Culloden

Great quote in the bathroom stall

All in all, a pretty sweet trip. We arrived back in Edinburgh and had a late dinner then just crashed as we had to be up very early for our flight to Amsterdam. Having two friends with me when flying is a good idea, as it ensures I arrive at the airport for my flight ha ha. So we flew down to Amsterdam, and checked into our hostels then met up for a walking tour of the city. Well, the walking tour was being lead by an American dude who had a problem with talking way too much, such that we were over an hour into the tour and had only walked all of 10 minutes, and at this rate the tour was going to take at least 3 or 4 hours, so the guys wanted to bail. We decided to head on over to the Heineken brewery for a tour of that, which was a pretty interesting tour. After that I really needed to head back to my hostel to have a power nap, as I was completely exhausted, but agreed to meet up with the guys later on in the evening around 7 pm. Unfortunately, I slept through my alarm and didn't get up until past 7, but no big deal as there was a Canadian friend also staying at my hostel, so I just met up with her.

We ended up hanging out at the hostel enjoying the drink specials and having a pretty good time laughing at all the 16 year old German students that were getting pretty crazy at the hostel bar, and then we wandered off to some bar recommended by a local. On the way to the bar, the one American girl and I kept flirting a fair bit, but then one of the other American guys who she claimed she had no interest in kept stealing her away during the walk to the bar, so I started to not really care, but then she would come running up and grab my hand and tell me she wasn't interested in him...it ended up being a really really weird little love triangle almost ha ha, but eventually I just told her to not worry about it and get with him, since I didn't really care! The local bar we went to was quite interesting, as the Dutch people are very very very tall...even all the women there were generally taller than me, so that's how we knew it was a local bar. We had a pretty good time there, but eventually everyone dispersed so I went for a wander around the city to check out the late night sights ha ha, but didn't get "up" to much.

I caught up on a bit of sleep, and agreed to meet the guys at the Bols museum for a tour, but apparently they are only closed on Tuesdays...like what the hell is that! So instead of that we just wandered over for a beer near the Van Gogh museum and oogled the good looking Dutch girls. At one point Pancho called the one really good looking girl over to ask her if she knew where a nightclub would be and if she had a better map than the one he had. I called him out on it and told her that he actually knew where to go but that he thought she was cute and just wanted to talk to her, which made ol Panch rather embarrassed and gave everyone a good laugh.

After that we just agreed to meet up later on and do a pub crawl, so we all met at my hostel, and then headed out to Leidsepleine to meet up with the pub crawl, but realized that it was going to be crappy, so we just found some other bars and did our own pub crawl and had a pretty good night. The guys were headed off to Belgium the next day, and I wasn't too sure where I was going at this point, so we had a very late night parting of ways, and told Pancho to keep his head "up" for his last night hanging out in the 'Dam.

The next day I just basically bought a rail pass, and tried to figure out what I was going to do, so I decided to just head off to Copenhagen and start my Scandinavian adventures, but unfortunately all the trains were booked, so I had to stay one extra night. No worries though, cause I hung out with some pretty hilarious Irish boys that I had briefly met the previous night at the hostel, and we went out into the red light district and had a pretty wild time. The boys were quite nuts, and I introduced a few of them to chewing tobacco to have a laugh and see how ill they got, but they all handled it quite well even though it only lasted for about 5 minutes before they all spit it out. Anyways good times, and lots of Amsterdamage including the last night at the hostel bar, which lead to a 5 am sleep session, and me sleeping in and missing the first two trains of the day, but nevertheless I made my way to Copenhagen and am now touring around the North.