Bye bye to Sea Life Center and Back to Edinburgh

On my last day at Sea Life Center I did the seal training/feeding as I mentioned before and I was given a cute little mug and plush seal and bought myself a snazzy shark mug. (I use the shark mug everyday at school and the kids adore it!)

I rode the bus into town one last time and took a little walk around. Oban is a super cute little town with a lot of charm. I picked up some fish and chips and an ice cream cone. I then hung out one last night with the group of hostel volunteers. (Originally when I first showed up at the hostel, this group of like 15 people irritated/ignored me. They were some travellers who had been staying and working at the hostel for a few weeks and they were super cliquish. They would always cook together and use the whole kitchen and hog the couches in the hang out area. After I left for a few days after being there a week an a half and then reappeared, they took some interest in me and were actually friendly. We got along pretty well after that.)

In other hostel news the last few nights there was a woman in my dorm who snored to the point that she would choke. It was so bad that it would wake me up in the middle of the night. (and I'm a deeeep sleeper!) I was truly terrified that she was going to up and die in the middle of the might and I would have to handle some half-asleep CPR. I talked to one of the volunteers about her and apparently the snoring was keeping the whole dorm room awake.

Anyway, the next morning I crammed all my stuff back into my suitcase and caught the bus back the Edinburgh. The ride is about 4 hours but it's a really beautiful drive and I enjoy it a lot.

While in Edinburgh I wandered around some more and bought stuff from street vendors and watched street performances. I wandered through a few of the old museums on the Royal Mile and took a tour of The Real Mary King's Close which is a tour through a real close (or small alley like they used to have in the old Edinburgh) The people basically lived on top of each other and the buildings were built so high that the streets were in perpetual twilight. Some of the old buildings had been preserved (though they are underground now with all the construction that was plopped on top) It was really interesting (though a little expensive) and you are not allowed to take pictures because it is underneath some kind of important government building and you might be a terrorist or something....

Stirling Castle!!

 On my last full day in Edinburgh I caught a train to Stirling where another castle is. Stirling has a very long and interesting history and the tour I went on was really cool. Mary Queen of Scots lived here for a time and I find her fascinating. My favorite part of the tour is where you go through the royal apartments and actors are dressed in period costume and talk to you all about what would have been like to live there. They also have reproductions of some very famous unicorn tapestries. (btw codpieces during that time were obscene)

I also loved the Stirling heads exhibit. Once upon a time there used to be a glorious ceiling that was decorated with these enormous carved wooden head medallions. It collapsed a few hundred years ago but they were able to salvage a few and have recreated many to give people an idea of what they would have looked like.

I rode the train back to Edinburgh that afternoon and putzed around the city a bit before heading back to my hostel as the sun went down. I headed down to my room and all the rooms have these heavy self shutting doors. So I head into my room (on the first floor and the window goes out to where the smokers hang) it slams behind me and I go to turn on the light only to have nothing happen, no lights go on. It's pitch black so I immediately panic because of course there is a murderer in the room who has tampered with the lights. Right. I frantically fumble the door open and catch my breath in the normally lit hallway before beelining to the front desk. They offered to give me a flashlight. Apparently there was some electrical problem and they wouldn't be able to fix it until tomorrow. I thought about it, but was still a bit freaked so they offered to switch my room to a different dorm. That worked fine for me and, thankfully, my now room had working lights and was murderer free!

The next morning I woke up super early and attempted to be quiet as I dragged my suitcase down High Street to the big old bridge where I could catch a shuttle to the airport. From there I caught my plane and zipped on back the US!

And thus ended my most recent Scotland adventure!!

Last Weeks in Oban

After coming back from Edinburgh, I had about a week and a half left of my time in Oban. I continued to go to the Sea Life Sanctuary everyday and loved it. By this time I had most of the routines and tasks down.

Somedays I still got stuck on seaweed duty. (They used the seaweed from the loch in the exhibits, everynow and then they changed it out. So some lucky person got to go wade through the loch edges and pick up rocks with appropriately sized seaweed clumps.)

Another task I became very good at was food prep. As mentioned before, there were lots of fish to cut for various animals (don't forget the seahorses!). Occasionally I was asked to prepare food for the otters. They got chunks of fish in addition to baby chicks cut in half. We had to cut them in half in order to remove the yolk sac because it can give the otters gall stones or something.

Chicks pre-chop

Everynow and then I'd help out Ceri with the touchpool. She was in charge of interacting with the guests and talking about various exhibits and maintaining the health of the touchpool creatures.

One special thing each volunteer gets to do on his or her last day is participate in the seal training and feeding. You get to give commands and stroke them and it's pretty cool.

Thats the sign for no more!

I really enjoyed my experience at Oban's Sea Life Center and if I'm ever around there in the future I will definitely stop by again! 

Short Trip to Edinburgh

Edinburgh (or as it's pronounced Edinburra) is one of my absolute favorite cities!!

I had about 4 days off in the middle of my time in Scotland and I love the history and nightlife of Edinburgh so I hopped back on the bus and booked a hostel near High Street.

My first night I went on a ghost tour of the city. There are so many of them around and quite a few rely on cheap thrills. They'll tell you ridiculous ghost stories and have dudes in masks waiting around to jump at you. I went on one like that the last time I was there and wasn't that impressed. This time I went on a Sandemans Tour (I love that tour company and have been on many of their free walking tours around other European cities.) The Sandeman Tours like to stick to historical atrocities and more plausible ghost stories. Think Burke and Hare and body snatchers and such. There is so much history (and most of it is so violent) that its still a thrill.

The next day, I walked up the Royal Mile and window shopped and poked around. I went into the Optical Illusion Museum and really enjoyed it. Its about 5 crampt floors of all kinds of random illusions. I've got a few pictures of me as a dude. (handsome, i think, but I don't know why my face got soooo skinny) and a creepy baby thing. The last part at the tippy top of the Museum is a camera obscura which is basically a very old device that uses a mirror and a dark room to project a moving image of whats going on outside and you can move the mirror around to point it at different things. It's basically a peeping tom's wet dream.

View from the top of the optical illusion museum

The actual camera obscura. The image was projected on the white table and you moved it around with the stick thing. 

Me as a dude, hot right?

Me as a creepy baby

fun!

Later that night I did one of the Sandeman pup crawls and had a fantastic time! I hung out most of the night with a really cool group of people. There was a dude from Germany and a few girls from Sweden and a random smattering of other nationalities. We got pretty drunkkk and I'm quite happy that we all walked back to our hostels together because after visiting 5 bars that night I might have had some trouble locating mine....

The next morning, while feeling a bit under the weather, I visited Edinburgh Castle again. It has so much history and is quite large. I spent the majority of an afternoon exploring around. The day was kind of meh and rainy but that happens.

 

This is inside the museum-y part. I'm not sure that I was allowed to take this picture, but hey, I'm a rebel.  

This is the room where Mary Queen of Scots (that woman fascinates me) gave birth to King James of Scotland and England

Look what I found in one of the Scottish gift shops! Shark teeth! You better believe I hit up this thing quite a few times! In this same shop is the Scottish Textile Museum which was quite interesting. I bought a bag of tartan scraps that I plan to use for various projects in the future....

I also spent some time puttering about some more on the Royal Mile and went down to Princes Street to do some shopping. I also wandered around to Grassmarket Street and found the coolest vintage shop. Basically I spent a bunch of money.

Later I met some guys (Dave and Kevin) staying in my hostel and we hung out and grabbed dinner and later went out on the town for some karaoke and ciders/beers. I busted out my Whitney Houston with "I Just Wanna Dance With Somebody" I didn'y quite know all the words in the middle bits but the DJ seemed to really like me anyway. (I might have fluffed my afro at him, haha) There were some questionable vending machines in the bar bathrooms....yikes. On this night a good time was had by all and nobody went overboard with the dranks so it was all good.

Who doesn't love a little karaoke? Sing it, Dave!

The next day was my last day and in the morning I headed over to The Edinburgh Dungeon which is basically like a walk through Edinburgh/Scotland's history and tall tales. You go through various themed rooms where actors interact with you and in some you go on rides. It was super awesome and I highly recommend it, but it's not for the faint hearted. At one point we were on a boat ride and the lights go off and a creepy actress playing the part of an urban legend of Sawney Bean jumped on the boat and touches you and whispers things at you and it's quite terrifying. On the tour was only me and a couple. The girl was so terrified at one point that she almost left in the middle of the tour. I don't know if I would have been able to go it alone, so I'm glad she stuck it out.

Eventually my time in Edinburgh was over and I caught my bus back to Oban and the aquarium!