First impressions

Hi everyone! At the suggestion of some of you back in Canada, I will be (trying my hardest) to blog about my time here in Edinburgh. I figured it's a nice mix: the stories of a mass e-mail with the photo-posting possibilities of facebook. Hopefully the content is interesting to more people than my immediate family... I'm a little self-conscious when it comes to this sort of thing. But here goes!

I've been here two days and already I love the city! I've been staying at a hostel because I can't move into my residence until tomorrow (Saturday). Though very tired due to jet lag and such, I've tired to walk around and get a sense of the city, both on my own and as part of a free 3 hour tour that was advertised at my hostel. The city is just as or maybe even more beautiful than I imagined - and definitely more hilly than I realized, though I blame this on the fact that I spent a lot of time looking at two-dimensional maps of the city before I got here.

The hostel itself is pretty sweet, as the photo below kind of shows. It's a few steps off the Royal Mile just below the castle - hence the name "Castle Rock Hostel".



I'm in one of those 5 bunkbed rooms... something I can cope with for 2 nights, especially knowing that I'll have a room all to myself tomorrow.

Speaking of my room... my residence is just up the street from the hostel - way closer than it seemed on the map, which is excellent, especially considering that I maxed out my baggage allowance and will have to roll two 50 lbs suitcases and my computer-and-gadget-filled knapsack over there tomorrow morning. I am slightly worried by the fact that my room is 712 - hopefully that doesn't mean 7th floor... or I could be facing some brutal flights of stairs tomorrow. Either way, I am pumped to move in. I'll show you what it looks like from the street:



You can't see it, but the date about the doorway is 1690 - and the little red shop beside it is "The 'Wee' Whisky Shop" - haven't been in there yet. You go through the entrance way and the residence building encircles the courtyard behind. But more on that once I actually move in...


I am about a 2 min walk down the hill from the Edinburgh Castle. Here's a view of the castle from my hostel:


Right now they have bandstands still set up from the military tattoo that happened in August, so I can't yet put up a shot of the Castle as viewed up the Royal Mile, from in front of my residence. Here is the Royal Mile looking down towards my residence from the Castle esplanade, however:


And looking even further down the Royal Mile from in front of my residence - I am near the top of the Royal Mile, which is actually just over a mile long:


As you can see, there was sunshine yesterday! In fact, it's yet to rain while I've been here (at least while I am awake to observe rain), so I'll take that as a good omen.

I have lots more pictures to post, most of which lend themselves to far more interesting commentary than this, but the hostel wifi connection isn't super fast, and I'm slightly concerned that I am slowing down the internet for everyone else by uploading megasized photo files (there are at least 6 other laptops here in the common room with me). So, I will save them for tomorrow when I have my own internet connection! They're also playing a Nickleback song over the speakers (apparently you can't even escape bad CanCon by hopping across the pond), which is as good a reason as any to get out of here and go to bed. More soon...