Welcome to Pound Town

As some of you might have noticed, the guys and I traveled to Edinburgh, Scotland last weekend.  Let me start by saying that getting into a fight with a Scottish native who's twice your size isn't the best idea.  Thankfully I had Patrick Foley (aka Gor) to make sure I didn't get my face kicked in. Foleys rule.

Here's a somewhat brief rundown of the trip:

We landed in Edinburgh at about 11pm Friday night.  After checking in to the sketchiest hostel known to man, we went to a local bar for a few pints.  By that point everyone there was already hammered and the place closed in half an hour.  We stayed and had a good time, but had to go find somewhere else that was open later.  We ended up in a nightclub called "whistle binkies" where there were probably 100 blackout 30-year-old weirdos having the time of their lives.

Upon entering the bar, we immediately got the feeling that people weren't appreciating our company, but as all good Americans do we didn't give a shit and stayed.  As we were enjoying some local beer, I noticed that one guy sitting across from us was staring us down intently.  I slyly mentioned my observation to Cam, and from there things got weird.  Cam glanced over at him a few times and every time he did, the crazy Scot was giving him a death glare.  Cam finally decided to stare back, and they had a nice awkward 30 second stare down before the local opened his mouth and said "get the fu*% out of here", to which Cam subtly replied, "excuse me, I can't hear you. Is there a problem?"

From there, the guy proceeded to introduce us to who he said was the bar owner (BS), we all made a few not-so-smart comments to him, and as he leaned over to talk shit to me, he oddly bit my ear.  All I wanted to do was punch him in the face, but thankfully Cam and Pat are brighter than I am and realized that you don't get into fights in a foreign country, especially when you're one of the smallest guys there.
We managed to get back to our Stephen King designed hostel safely, and decided not to return to Whistle Binkies for the remainder of the trip.

On Saturday we roamed around Edinbugh and checked out a ton of cool places.  The amount of history in the city is unbelievable, and us American's simply can't understand until we see it.  This was one of the coolest views ever from a castle overlooking the city

We went out Saturday night, and once again got some crazy stories.  We were planning on just having a few beers and then getting some rest, as we were traveling to St. Andrews on Sunday to play golf.  We ended up meeting some crazy Scottish guy that was so hammered he couldn't stand up. After talking with him and his girlfriend for a while, he got thrown out of the bar so we tried to get him into another one, but that didn't work.  After they left, we started talking to another older couple next to us.  It turned out that the older gentleman was the head greenskeeper for all of the courses at St. Andrews. They were just in town for the night and gave us some good tips for playing on Sunday.  What a small world we live in.

On Sunday, we had an hour and a half bus ride before arriving in St. Andrews.  It was a perfect day for golf and the hostel was much nicer than the first one (might make a separate post about that).  We got to play fifteen holes of the Strathyrum course for 12pounds (ridiculously cheap for golf, especially at one of the nicest locations in the world).  It was one of the coolest, yet worst rounds of golf I've ever played.  While we were chipping on the 12th hole, the greenskeeper and his wife that we met the night before showed up to talk with us.  They walked the entire course looking for us just to make sure we got in okay and didn't have any troubles.  I, of course, shanked my shot and he just laughed hysterically at me.  

After getting to play an easyish course, we walked the old course since it was closed for play.  I  must say that I truly have an appreciation for pro golfers.  You can't truly understand the difficulty while watching on TV, but the bunkers and fairways were absolutely insane.  I stood in a bunker that was as tall as me...I haven't seen anything like that before in my life and this picture doesn't even come close to doing it justice.

On Monday, we returned to Edinburgh and flew back to Ireland.  We walked more in two days than I think I ever have in my life so we were all exhausted by the time we got back.  We also realized how horrible the dollar is compared to the pound.  While we thought we were doing a good job not spending too much, our bank accounts said otherwise.  Scotland really pounded us ;) so keep that in mind if you ever travel to the EU. 

This is the first weekend in a while where we've gotten to hang out and just relax.  As of now, no formal trips planned but we're hoping to go on some soon.  We also haven't gotten to see much Olympic action besides team USA losing to Canada and then getting stomped by Finland today.  We're starting to miss our electronically driven country, but we know we'll be back soon enough.