11.00 pm on Friday, we're still looking for things to do the next day. I didn't want to do this at all. It's her trip. But I went to Tripadvisor and picked out the number one thing on their list of things to do in Edinburgh: climb Arthur's Seat. And she also wanted to go to Edinburgh Castle.
So we went to Edinburgh Castle. Pretty disappointing. You don't really go into the castle at all except at the end to see the crown jewels. You just go around the castle grounds and there are some small buildings...a prison, chapel, this kind of thing. A few small museums too. One museum was just a bunch of books with the names of Scottish people who died in WWI and WWII. Each book is a different military division. It was weird.
Then you see the crown jewels. Have to first wait in line to get in (not too long) and then the line slowly snakes through the castle where there's the history of the Scottish monarchy shown via paintings and statues. Finally, you get to the crown jewels (a sword, a sceptre, maybe a crown, and a few other small pieces) and there's a woman working there who says, "You can go around to see the crown jewels or you can cut in front here for a quick exit. It's up to you."
This is insulting not just to me as a paying guest of this castle but to the majesty of the crown jewels of Scotland. You mean to tell me that I waited in line 45 minutes to see the crown jewels and then when I finally arrive you say, "Well, they're just the crown jewels of Scotland. If you don't want to bother, just cut in front and you can leave". Get fucked.
I did a similar tour for the Tower of London. Same set up. You go through the tower in line with a bunch of other people (much longer line) and look at the walls and shit at the paintings and statues that give a history of the English monarchy. But in the Tower of London, when you get to the room with the crown jewels, you step on to a conveyor belt. This is to prevent people from stopping and holding up the line.
Anyway, it was alright. Not amazing.
Then it was off to the second part of our day. So we walked down to Arthur's Seat. We stopped at a Lebanese restaurant on the way there. They served weird kebabs. Not what I was expecting. But I ate it.
From what I read the previous night about Arthur's Seat, it's in a park and a nice day out. You climb a hill. Nice views. Great.
So we go to the park. Nobody is really there. I use Google Maps to find the path to Arthur's Seat. We start climbing. There's like man-made stairs carved into the rock.
So we're climbing. And more climbing. My lady friend isn't doing well. She's stopping to take a break every so often. Also, she's wearing a long skirt. And we didn't bring any water or food other than some Sour Starburst that I bought after the lunch.
We keep going up and we're pretty high up now. My lady friend is sitting down for like the fourth time and I ask her if she wants to go back down. She says no.
I'm not feeling amazing myself and I'm thinking if it would even be easier to go down again than to go up. Because I read that one side is steeper than the other and surely we're taking the steeper side.
But we keep going. She stops regularly. I ask a couple more times if she wants to go down but she says, "No, I want to do it."
I'll spare you further details, but eventually we got to the top. It wasn't easy. Not everything was stairs. And even the stairs weren't always very good. There were some slippery parts. And we weren't at all prepared for this. Towards the end, she constantly wanted me to hold her hand to help her up. She was afraid that she would fall. And she got stung by some nettles.
Indeed, toward the very top, it's quite steep and there's no stairs and no obvious paths. So she didn't want to do it. Said it was dangerous. But we made it up. At the top, there's a big compass on top of a stone and on another stoner, there's the summit. So we took pictures on each of those stones.
The way down was also difficult. There was a drop of about five feet into a narrow chasm that almost killed me and when she saw it, she refused to come down. Then other climbers saw her and asked if she was alright and took her around an easier path.
The way down was in fact much less steep, though. Not really any stairs. Mostly slopes. But some were slippery and she wasn't happy to go down them, had to hold her hand. But then she found a really easy hill that just goes down at a semi-comfortable angle and we went down that for the remainder. Then we had to walk for like 75 minutes through the park. A couple of lakes. Saw some ducks. By the time we got back to the train station, it was about 8.00. So if we had left for Edinburgh any later, it would have been dark and not ideal for volcano climbing.
But she liked it and I liked it. Even though I almost killed myself jumping down that drop. And it hurt my knee. And my back hurt the next day.
So the next day, we go to the number one thing to do in Glasgow according to whatever this website was: Kelvinside or whatever Museum.
It was alright. Just a museum and art gallery. Had some mounted animals and a couple of fossilised dinosaur replica skeletons, and medieval armour, shit like this. And some paintings both from 19th century Glasgow artists and some Dutch and French paintings from the same era.
It was actually somewhat small compared to other museums I've been to. You can comfortably see everything in five hours. But my back started hurting really bad toward the end so had to sit down a few times.
Anyway, it was nice to have her over. I was thinking that it would be pleasant to live with her full-time. But I don't know. I'm not very settled.
But it's just the little things you see from spending a few days with somebody. She was listening to music on her phone, for example. Black people music. I recognised Rihanna. She was listening on her headphones. And we were watching Family Guy, an episode spoofing that neighbourhood watch guy in Florida who shot the black kid who he thought was breaking into an apartment or something. And she laughed at some of the race-based jokes. I also saw her watching some video on her phone, maybe it was a music video or something, but it was a white guy kissing a black woman and it went on for some time. Some kind of female porn, I gather. And she likes the interracial stuff, I guess.
Anyway, I realised that solitude is great and all but it's also nice to have somebody to do stuff with and just sit at home with. Talk and whatnot. So have to think about it. If I should ask her to move to fabulous Glasgow. And then whatever I decide to do after that. That's really the problem. I don't know what I'm going to do and I don't want to involve somebody else.
And anyway, nothing has happened with Tinder ever so it's safe to say that I've tried all other avenues for companionship.
