Thursday 4/15

So...tired...must...keep...typing...

Day six, kiddos.

So like I said, it's hard to leave quietly if the entire hostel can hear you moving around. Regardless, I woke Alice and Courtney up for showers and then we did our best to not crinkle a million plastic bags. Yeah, that didn't work so well, but hey, we tried.

After breakfast downstairs, we set off to see as much as we could before our noon bus to Aberdeen. We put our bags in a locker in the bus station, an action for which my shoulders thanked me all day, and then sat in this big daffodil garden for a while while staring blankly into space. I guess you could say it was another lazy day.

But then--WE WENT TO THE ELEPHANT HOUSE!!!!! Aaahhhhh! I was so so so excited, and seriously still am just because I GOT TO SIT THERE! Oh my goodness it was awesome amazing wonderful.

I got some carrot cake and an elephant cookie for a snack--isn't he cute?
We just happened to sit at the one table that has drawers all around it...and since J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter on napkins, customers leave notes on napkins or other random pieces of paper. We read a bunch; some were really funny stories from tourists, some were in different languages, some were weird, but they all mentioned something about Rowling. We didn't leave one, but it was a lot of fun to look at them.
The view out of the window by my seat. I can see why Rowling came here to write. I wonder if the castle, which you can see, was any inspiration for Hogwarts? Apparently a lot of the street names in the city are also the names of characters, like McGonagle.
And look--she's even affected the menu!
That was obviously the highlight of my entire trip. Yay. :)

After that lightened my mood, we fought for space on the bus (which drove by some lovely daffodil fields--do they grow them to sell the bulbs?), then had another grueling hike to the hostel in Aberdeen. Unfortunately, our luck ran out and we never did end up getting a nice map of Aberdeen. Some guy on the side of the road saw how lost we were and gave us directions.

We checked in and then headed to a grocery store, buying out the clearanced microvable meals and biscuits, then watched TV with some really random people. Since we ended up staying there for three nights ultimately, we got to know them a bit. That night, however, we made plans for calling a taxi and talked about what we were going to do when we got home after our flight left in the morning. Our first clue that all wasn't well had been that morning, when the girl manning reception in Edinburgh said that the airlines were getting shut, and watching the news that night sure didn't sound any better. The more we watched, the more serious the volcanic ash problem seemed to become.

But we'll find out about that soon enough.