Sunrise, Edinburgh, Rugby

I had only seen one sunrise since we had come over so I decided to set it out my first morning in Edinburgh to watch it and try and take some good photographs. Bridget, who is always up for an adventure as well, came along with me and after asking the bell clerk at 6:00 am where the best spot to watch the sunrise was he directed us to a place called Calton Hill. The sunrise was beautiful and up on this cold hill full of monuments we saw a man who had a camera as well. He was also packing up a tent so we talked to him and found out his interesting story. His name was Youseff Shiban, a Christian Palestinian who went to university in Germany. (His blog http://visitingthekingdom.blogspot.com )

After hearing his story Bridget and I no longer felt quite so adventurous. Youseff and his friend were literally backpacking all over the UK living in tents and staying in people’s houses while hitchhiking rides everywhere. He informed me that in Scotland anyone can sleep on public property so he just set up his tent in different parks that suited him. Luckily, he didn’t have to do this often since he and his friend were “couch surfers”. I was familiar with this concept but I’m sure the general public is not. Basically, people all over the world post on the internet that they have an extra couch for anyone coming through town to use and travelers call them to see if its open at that time. (http://www.couchsurfing.com) Nana and Papa, I know you have a lot of extra rooms in your house so I went ahead and listed that you had 3 rooms ready for anyone coming through Conyers.

I saw all the major tourist sites in Edinburgh like St. Giles cathedral, the castle, the Walter Scott monument, and lots of others. The ugliest site I visited was their parliament which looked like a new age coffee shop turned into legislative chambers. You should look it up on google images. Keith, being the rugby expert on the trip, found out that a match of the Rugby World cup was being played in the city one of the nights we were there so we got tickets and watched Scotland tear the Romania team to pieces. At the end a streaker ran onto the field – of course he was quickly detained by police.

Living out of a suitcase is getting old as well as washing clothes in a sink. London will be here soon enough and I can’t wait.