Worst Dressed at Halloween

Day 19: Saturday October 29th, 2011

Ah, Edinburgh. Pronounced Ed-in-burr-a, or basically Edin-bra. It’s the capital of Scotland, its Old Town and New Town districts are listed on UNESCO (you can’t change anything), adding to my list. It’s where the Scottish parliament sits (and don’t do much else until they get freedom from the Brits which they desperately want), coincidentally where the massive Edinburgh Festival happens every August (on my to-do list), and where Adam Smith is from. But try and keep me from getting my hands off Scotland, bro (the worst joke of the post was brought to you by Primark, the cheapest clothing store on the planet coming soon to the streets of Edinburgh).

Tired and hungover, I make it to the free walking tour. There was a really hot Aussie girl, let’s call her Rose, in the group, but I didn’t have the energy. We saw the Edinburgh castle (which for my money, or lack thereof because I actually didn’t pay to get in to see the inside, was the most impressive one I saw in all the UK), but who cares about that when we also saw where JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter (a cafe called the Elephant Room). We also walked through a graveyard where she used to walk to get inspiration for names. One grave was marked Tom Riddel. Creepy. Besides the graveyard is a whimsical looking school that partly inspired Hogwarts. It’s a really nice private school and where Rowling’s kids go, apparently. This graveyard was the Greyfriars cemetary, and had the cutest story ever to go along with it.
John Gray used to be a nightwatchmen of the graveyard with his terrier Bobby for two years before his death. After his death, Bobby waited and guarded his grave for 14 years. Aww. I mean presumably he got up to eat and piss, but maybe people came by and fed him. Anyways, the dog has a bar named after him and a statue. Made me miss Bandit dearly.
After the tour we stopped at a bar for haggis, neeps and tatties. Haggis is a traditional scottish dish you have to try: it’s sausage cooked in a casing of sheep’s intestine; it’s no worse than a normal sausage or hot dog. Neeps is turnips, tatties is mash potatoes. Anyways, it kind of came in like a block pie form. The haggis was good, the presentation, meh. I met two ugly Australian girls and a Brazilian while I eat, and I buy discounted tickets to the Halloween pub crawl.
After eats, I checked out the Writer’s Museum, where I added a few authors to my accompanied reading list: Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Burns. It was free and a fun little museum. I had two scotch eggs for dinner, bought crappy glasses, donned my Superman shirt and a dress shirt over it, and Clark Kent was born (for the 2nd year in a row, sue me).
At the Halloween pub crawl, I’m attacked by a Saw-looking doctor. It’s Jimmy Olsen, joining me in Clark Kent garb. It’s too perfect. Jimmy is wasted and all over the place for most of the night, but it’s fitting that we run into each other again. I also talked with the tour guide from earlier, who was this chick Andra who was hot and in a legit Indiana Jones costume (props) and said I should facebook her, but I couldn’t fucking find her. She had a fiance though, so whatever. Continuing on that theme, I met Kayla, a Florida girl with a boyfriend.
The night started with a Jager ghost train, where they lined up about 30 shots of jagers on top of glasses of red bull, and like dominoes, they all fell in. A beautiful thing.

The night is a blur, like all pub crawls are, but I talked to all sorts of people. There was Erica and Shelly, two hot, stoner californian Asians, Catarina and Carol from Germany, a guy named Walter who was friends with Jimmy, some chick named Grace that I remembered in the morning but don’t remember now, and this really awesome black guy in London who said I could stay with him if I ever return. We’re facebook official, but I’m blanking on his name.
Later in the night I win the award for “good costume idea, but not quite there,” or something like that which didn’t really seem like a good thing. But I was given a sexy cat costume, which I wore on top of my Clark Kent costume until lending it to the German girls (after I accidentally dipped the cat tail in the toilet, of course). The girl who won was Little Bo Peep with a sheep impaled on her shepherd stick (I don’t remember what they’re called). Good shit, Edinburgh. Good shit.

Next: I didn’t piss myself!