new years with the scots (it's friggin' cold!)

we finally made it to scotland. appparently, when traveling in europe you have to plan things. and even more, when it is new years eve, you have to be meticulous. annette and i are neither planners, nor meticulous. so when we were in ireland and started looking into getting to scotland, we hit a wall. all the hostels/hotels here were unbelievably expensive and you had to commit to staying for a minimum of 3 nights, which would have been exorbinant. our spirits faltered a bit, and honestly i was not sure that we would make it here.

we had taken the bus from dublin to belfast, thinking that either way we could cross over from here to to either scotland or england, depending on what happened. i did not see any of belfast because when we got to the hostel at 4 pm, i decided to take a nap. and that nap ended up being 17 hours. anyhow, when i woke up the next morning, annette had just discovered that someone on couchsurfing had a last minute cancellation so we would have a place to stay in edinburgh for new years. again, how lucky we are!!! so we made our way to edinburgh. first we had to take a ferry from belfast to straener in scotland. and then we were able to catch a bus from the ferry terminal straight to edinburgh. we had really great timing.

edinburgh is a stunning city!!! when we arrived, it was already evening, so we could not make out all the details, but there were still things that definitely caught my eye. first, there wss a carnival going on, so all the lights from the rides illuminated the streets. but the best part was seeing edinburgh castle, which sits on a hill and overlooks the entire city. it was almost like it was glowing, the way it was all lit up. it is this massive gothic style castle and seeing it was breathtaking.

we stayed with this guy martin (who was our couchsurfing savior) and his roommates. staying with couchsurfing people is always so fun because you automatically meet a cool group of people. when we arrived there were 2 other couchsurfers there. we all had a nice pow wow before heading over to martin' sister's house. there we sat around and talked over a bottle of wine, which was exactly up my alley after being on a bus all day.

the main thing that we wanted to do was go to the edinburgh street party, which is the big new year's eve event here. we somehow managed to get last minute release tickets, the only stipulation being that we had to wait in line the following day to get them. i wasn't really all that concerned, until i saw the line. it wound all around st. andrews square and we ended up having to wait for 3 hours to pick up our tickets. it was also a freezing ass cold day, which made it even more miserable. i had to leave the line to go buy a fleece and gloves. eventually, after many minutes of running in place and doing calf raises, we were able to pick up our tickets.

but standing in line for 3 hours was definitely worth it for the chance to go to this street fair. it was just such good vibes. even though there were thousands of people in the street, everyone was just so happy!! and when the countdown for the new year happened, there were fireworks over edinburgh castle. so beautiful!!! annette and i walked up and down the streets in pink boas and cowboy hats, rejoicing the new year with the scots. absolutely marvelous!!! i definitely feel as if i brought in 2009 with a bang!!