Scotland - Nightlife
Now I don't want to say the Scots are drunks, but there are A LOT of place to go out in Edinburgh. And they all look cool.
First off, this was going to be an easy night because we had an 8:00am bus to go catch teh Loch Ness MOnster in the morning. And I'm not good with hostels or long bus rides, so a hangover was not going to help.
I should mention we had 12 exchange students on the trip, a merry mix of Chinese, French, Venezuelan and Americans that certainly stood out in any crowd of Scots. But my aversion to spending any waking minute in the hostel, by default I became the leader of a two person recon mission to find a place to start the night.
I can't remember if I mentioned the complete inability of this group to make any decision. This is an absolutely great group of people, but their one flaw is that you honestly have no chance to get them moving unless you tell them exactly where you will be. Then they feel an obligation to find you. They may complain about it when they get there, but they'll stay there a while until they can muster the energy to think about someplace else to go.
I'm going to be brief because it doesn't translate well, but Edinburgh has so many of the coolest little bars with the perfect amount of people and unthreatening crowds. There's always 1 person in line ahead of you for a beer, and enough people to feel full without being crowded. That may have something to do with the 2,000 pubs.
But we found everything on Grassmarket entertaining and visited a ridiculous monster of a place called Espionage. This is a bar on a hill where you walk in at ground level and see an unassuming lounge that holds about 50 people. You snoop around a little and go down a staircase to a lower floor lounge and a few more people. Walk through there and get to another staircase which takes you down to a bigger bar with a huge dance floor. But follow the staircase down and you get to floor 4, with a huge dance floor playing R+B hits. If you lose your mates here, you're likely never to see them again.
Quick story: Raymond (the Venezuelan guy) and and I took a quick detour to an Irish place down the street because he had never heard Irish music and I thought that was a crime. When we came back, I saw Guillaume smoking a cigarette at our table with some weird drunk guy who must've wandered over. Guillaume absolutely doesn't smoke, so that seemed odd. It seemed odder when I looked back over and saw the drunk guy face forward down on the table, passed out. I went over to the bouncer and said, "Yeah, I think there's some guy we don't know passed out at our table." The bouncer chuckled (you don't see that often in Scotland) and the problem was eliminated.
Anyway, being that we really couldn't drink that much and I REALLY didn't want to go back to the hostel, Raymond, lillian, Guillaume and I set out on a long, long, long walk around the city that took us from Old Town to the West End, back down through New Town and back up to the castle hostel. We walked by 100 bars on the trip, so I feel like I can speak with some authority on this subject.
Moral of the story - if you have some time and some good mates, Edinburgh would be a tremendous place for a summer weekend of golf and going out.
First off, this was going to be an easy night because we had an 8:00am bus to go catch teh Loch Ness MOnster in the morning. And I'm not good with hostels or long bus rides, so a hangover was not going to help.
I should mention we had 12 exchange students on the trip, a merry mix of Chinese, French, Venezuelan and Americans that certainly stood out in any crowd of Scots. But my aversion to spending any waking minute in the hostel, by default I became the leader of a two person recon mission to find a place to start the night.
I can't remember if I mentioned the complete inability of this group to make any decision. This is an absolutely great group of people, but their one flaw is that you honestly have no chance to get them moving unless you tell them exactly where you will be. Then they feel an obligation to find you. They may complain about it when they get there, but they'll stay there a while until they can muster the energy to think about someplace else to go.
I'm going to be brief because it doesn't translate well, but Edinburgh has so many of the coolest little bars with the perfect amount of people and unthreatening crowds. There's always 1 person in line ahead of you for a beer, and enough people to feel full without being crowded. That may have something to do with the 2,000 pubs.
But we found everything on Grassmarket entertaining and visited a ridiculous monster of a place called Espionage. This is a bar on a hill where you walk in at ground level and see an unassuming lounge that holds about 50 people. You snoop around a little and go down a staircase to a lower floor lounge and a few more people. Walk through there and get to another staircase which takes you down to a bigger bar with a huge dance floor. But follow the staircase down and you get to floor 4, with a huge dance floor playing R+B hits. If you lose your mates here, you're likely never to see them again.
Quick story: Raymond (the Venezuelan guy) and and I took a quick detour to an Irish place down the street because he had never heard Irish music and I thought that was a crime. When we came back, I saw Guillaume smoking a cigarette at our table with some weird drunk guy who must've wandered over. Guillaume absolutely doesn't smoke, so that seemed odd. It seemed odder when I looked back over and saw the drunk guy face forward down on the table, passed out. I went over to the bouncer and said, "Yeah, I think there's some guy we don't know passed out at our table." The bouncer chuckled (you don't see that often in Scotland) and the problem was eliminated.
Anyway, being that we really couldn't drink that much and I REALLY didn't want to go back to the hostel, Raymond, lillian, Guillaume and I set out on a long, long, long walk around the city that took us from Old Town to the West End, back down through New Town and back up to the castle hostel. We walked by 100 bars on the trip, so I feel like I can speak with some authority on this subject.
Moral of the story - if you have some time and some good mates, Edinburgh would be a tremendous place for a summer weekend of golf and going out.
posted by ABoyer at
1:12 PM
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