Burns and Australia Day

In Scot jan the 25th is Robbie Burns day where everyone goes about quoting lines from his poems and generally checking out what he did back then in the day. Well at the hostel it was one of the staffs birthdays where the theme was 'mad hatter' so we had a bit of a dress up a drink and a table tennis competition all good fun. For Robbie Burns day we ate some haggis and Erin (the crazy canadian) read the 'ode to a haggis' poem before chopping it to bits!

Here you can see Miranda from Alice Springs winning the 'best hat' award

So after this day was over it became Australia day but in the hostel the most unaustralian thing happened.....the hostel people found out that their alcohol liscence had expired and someone had forgotten to renew it!!!!!! that meant the party planned at the hostel with bbq and all was called off. Terrible times, we had to go into town instead which would have been better if i didn't have a sore foot for some unknown reason, it's been sore for a while now more of a muscle thing i think, but dont worry its slowly getting better and soon will be in peak working condition. I can manage to play frizbee so everything is good.

Until next time...I have shopping to do!!

Up the seat

Moving on from the last post when i climbed up the crags this time I got Stu to come along and we climbed up Arthurs' seat (the higher one). Really it's quite an easy climb when you follow the beaten track up and around the back of the summit which reaches 251m. After being sheltered on the climb up it tends to get a tad windy once you clear everything and get exposed and also a bit cold but no snow damn it, only ice. The descent could have been just as easy as the ascent but that would have been a little boring now wouldn't it ;) Stu and myself decided to make our own way down the more dangerous section of the mountain but it's ok we are still here as you can tell by this post.
I'll now put in a couple of pictures in which i will use Stu as the guinea pig, ah what fun.

The Ice Man

He'll be coming down the mountain when he comes

Well it was good fun, even if we had the worst climbing shoes of all time on.

C'mon the snow

It has snowed a tiny bit, and at one stage there was some settled on the crags and arthurs seat....
Okay, well like the last post said i've woken up today before the afternoon. With perfect blue skies today (which you HAVE to take advantage of) I have managed to go for a bit of a climb up the Sailsbury Crags which overlook the city and you can actually see the snow on the highlands in the background of some pictures, this is getting me excited so i'll have to take a trip into the mountains again very soon, maybe hire a car with the boys if anyone will let us use our australian lisences.

So from here you can get a bit of a view over the city and into the mountains (which do have snow on them) accross the firth and also of Edinburgh castle on the left there.

The place where this photo was taken from isn't the highest point right by the city, that would be located in the opposite direction, is called 'Arthurs' Seat', and will be climbed in the next couple of days.

Now if we go back in time a bit to a week or so ago. Stu and I went for a road trip to Loch Lomond with a couple of locals from his ex work. Firstly we visited the oldest pub in Scotland for a few drinks and a spot of luch then drove onwards to the loch for our loverly boat trip into the wilderness....so we thought, to put it simply the pier was flooded and there was no way we were going on any sort of boat cruise.

It was a bit of a bummer. From here we made the executive decision to go to the pub then we decided to visit Stirling castle. This was all good and dandy but by the time we got to the castle it was only open for 3 more minutes so we managed to go to the loo and that was about it. All in all it was a 100% successful daytrip, it was great to get out into the country for a taste of the land, we just didn't get to see and do what had been planned.

Lastly, it'll be Australia Day soon so we will be partying and trying to get everyone to understand why we are doing so. Speak to you then.

Getting Organised!

Well finally i've managed to get up before the clock has struck noon...and much later on many...many occasions. The cricket being on at some silly time in the morning doesn't really help with this problem, keep up the good work aussies. since i've last posted something on the blog we've been up to a bit, including......starting a regular poker night on tuesday evenings/early wednesday mornings, with stu taking out first honours and the old housemates (Me, Stu and Iain) finishing 1, 2 and 3, he wasn't so lucky in the second week.

Hello from the Perth Team!!!!!!! You have to watch out for that Iain character

Following the last poker night on tuesday there was an...hmmm i think you call it 'interesting' cocktail night at the hostel which involved a whole bunch of dresses and they werent on the ladies. Unfortunately i had planned to get a dress but didn't manage to get one for this party. Certain pictures are being withheld but i can put one up that isnt so bad on the eye.

From left to right we have - Iain, Ilias, Stu and Tristan

It was a good night, I can't say any more than that.

Bringing in the New Year

Edinburgh, its a city known worldwide for it's new years eve street party and 4 day celebration, well that's all good and dandy if it didn't get CANCELLED!!!!! In lovely scottish style a rather windy storm happened to blow in and cause a bit of havoc across the entire country. Parties to the east were cancelled during the afternoon but in edinburgh we held on until the last minute then it was called off at 9 o'clock with big headlines across the tele!!


well you get the idea. Luckily thanks to Stu we had a house party to go to, so we welcomed in the new year indoors but managed to have great time anyway.
The city has been looking very nice with all the festive decorations all about the place and there are so many places you can go to get a view of everything. Walking up and down the streets you notice that there are a lot of pubs and clubs around, we've already managed to visit a good number over the last week or so. Because the city has been built on top of itself over the years and has interesting slopes all over the place some of the clubs go underground into the old style dungeons and caves, for example at one place you walk in the top, it goes 5 stories down, each level with it's own bar, then you can walk out from the bottom level onto another street. This was reallt handy when i figured out that my hostel was just around the corner from the bottom exit/entrance!! marvellous!

Here's a bit of the city for you, the castle would be to the left out of view, i'll put it in a picci sooner or later with it's blue light trees! A lot of the buildings are also lit up with just one colour, eg. one of the buildings just has blue light coming from all its windows, one has only red light etc... it is quite effective


gotta go now, i'll try get back with some more postings of things we're getting up to! It's poker night tomorrow night so there may be some funny pics of the boys in Edinburgh!