You think I've written novels before, wait till you finish this post! Oh, on another note, there are NO BOOK SPOILERS. So it's safe for those reading the book to read this. :)
Okay, I last left off with the quickest post about Kate arriving, right? Let me get my head into the right day...Friday.
Okay, Friday Maria and I woke up and went to get Kate at the train station. After we got Kate, we went to the post office so I could post my 2 post cards and get additional postage for some more (I have yet to post those...) and so Kate could get some medicine at Boots. We went to our hostel and dropped off our stuff and went to the castle.
The castle was interesting. We didn't go on our tour and didn't get the audio headset (£3 extra) so it was basically all us. We didn't get a map too (they didn't give us one!). We saw the crown jewels - absolutely amazing - and some other things. Kate and Marie put a coin into a well that's 34 meters deep. I was taking a picture of the well and Kate threw her coin in and I got a picture of the coin falling! Anyway, it was overall pretty neat. The view was the best part. It's at the highest part of Edinburgh and you could see all the way to the ocean. It was just fantastic.
After our stint through the castle, we went back to our hostel and changed into our "I solemnly swear..." t-shirts and went to the 1630 (I think it was) showing of OotP with Kate (first time) and Marie. Well, first off, I had my first experience of standing in the middle of a busy street! I'm not exactly sure what happened, but it was definitely interesting! Anyway, we watched the movie. I actually fell asleep during the climax of the movie. LoL I almost fell asleep earlier than that, but I made myself stay awake through a certain scene.
After the movie, we went and got dinner at Deacons Tavern. Food wasn't too bad. Then we walked down to Waterstones. There was already a line! In fact, 2 girls had started to line up at 11am! We were standing in line and Kate and Maria were getting bored and Kate still wasn't feeling too hot. I didn't mind standing in line and neither did Marie so we stood in line for about 2 hours while Kate and Maria went to the Balmoral (where Jo finished writing the book) and got Cosmos (one for themselves and one for Laurie and called her). A bit after 12am (15 after?) is when the first person with the book walked out of the store!! Apparently, the first 100 people or so got each book in a fairly nice orange bag that said "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" on it. We got our books close to 1am! I called home, work, and we walked Marie to her hotel. Then Kate, Maria, and I went back to our hostel and called Laurie. Kate (with the British accent) read Laurie the first chapter. After that, we were off to reading (about 1-1:30am)!
I read till 6am, slept for 2.5 hours, woke up and read till 12:15pm. I took a shower and we left for The Elephant House to meet Marie at 1pm. It was Marie, Maria, and my 2nd time at being at Elephant House and Kate's first time, but we all agreed we needed to read part of the book at the place Jo first started writing the book. Well, we 4 ended up finishing it AT the Elephant House, which meant I was done by 5:30pm, Marie done by 8pm, Kate done by 10:30pm, and Maria by 10:40pm. The place closes at 11pm. :P I almost went nuts sitting around waiting for someone to finish the book so I could dicuss it with someone. Actually, when I finished the book I just closed it and stared out of the window for a bit. Kate, Marie, Maria, and a random guy who was sitting with us all looked at me. It was just surreal finishing it. After 15 minutes of just sitting there, I got up and left for about 45 minutes. I couldn't sit around and just needed to mull in my thoughts since I couldn't talk with anyone. I came back after that, ordered dinner and waited for the rest to finish the book. I ended up buying an Elephant House t-shirt.
The best things about reading the book at Edinburgh were being in Jo's hometown, having a view of the castle out of our window and knowing it was right there, hearing the bag pipes in the distance playing, being with 2 equally crazy Harry Potter fans that would understand if I burst into tears, gasped, or whatnot, being able to just lay in bed till all hours of the night or past morning to read, and, lastly, finishing the book at the place Jo first started writing the books.
Anyway, after we finished the book, we went back to the hostel, talked about it, and I zonked out around 12:30am. I had been going on 2.5 hours of sleep for 39 hours. Did I mention the first night at the hostel I slept 11 hours?! It was the first really good night of sleep I've had in the UK and I'm hoping tonight has the same thing happen!
Anyway, this morning check out time was at 10am so we got up at 8am and packed up. After we put our stuff into the luggage storage room at Castle Rock we walked down the OTHER end (all the way to the other end, in fact) of the Royal Mile (actually called Lawnmarket) and went to the Holyrood Palace. THAT was neat! We had muffins/tea/OJ/scones for breakfast (different stuff for the 3 of us) and got our ticket to the palace. It was cheaper thant he castle and they handed out "free" headsets. Without the headsets, I must admit, it would have been really boring. The palace has some amazing history and just elaborate stuff in it. You only really saw the 2nd floor and Mary of Scotts chambers. Other than that, it was mostly closed off, which makes sense since the palace is still used for the Queen.
After that, I asked if we could go to the post office so I could post my cards, but when we got there we all remembered it's SUNDAY! So I couldn't. We were going to go find a post box somewhere, but had to run by the train station to change Kate's ticket. Well, we arrived 5 minutes before Kate's train was supposed to leave and she couldn't change it then and buying a whole new ticket was WAY too much. So we did a 1 minute panic where Kate asked if I could carry her bag home on the train (I was leaving at 1600), we quickly found her platform, she gave us hugs, and she left. Thank goodness we went when we did! If she missed her train, that would have been a BIG bummer.
After that, Maria and I went to lunch at Bobby's Something. It was named after that dog that was a police dog or something and when his owner died, the dog stayed by the grave till it died (14 years). I guess Disney did a movie loosely based off of that. Anyway, that's where we ate because a few Leaky people tried to take us there earlier in the week, but it closed at 8pm! The food was great (the best so far). Maria and I were sitting there and saw a jacket that looked like Marie's and I said wouldn't it be funny if we ran into her today? Well, we were finishing up our food and guess who walks in - Marie! So she ordered and since Maria and I had nothing to do we sat with her and talked about the book some more. A bit after 3 we went back to Castle Rock to get our stuff and we went to the train station where I caught my train and Maria was going up to the bridge to catch a bus to the airport to catch her plane (a couple hours early).
I caught the train, tried to snooze, got off at Doncaster, waited for 15 minutes and got back onto the train at the same platform as I had gotten off to go to Grantham. Kate met me there and I'm now at her house.
Tomorrow I leave for London on a train from Grantham to Kings Cross (I need to find someone to take my picture there...) and the tube from Kings Cross to Piccadilly Circus where I will walk the few minutes to my hostel, meet up with Moriah, and check-in! I'll be in London till I leave this Friday the 27th. I'll try to update while I'm in London, but we'll see since I won't have easy accessibility to a computer and have to buy time on the computers at the hostel. Now that I've said that, I'll probably do it for sure. LoL
I've got loads of pictures (I'm at almost 250 pictures, though at least 30 will be deleted since they're bad ones and I just didn't delete them and just retook them). :P
With that, I must buy my train ticket and tube Oyster card and go to bed since I'm started to feel dreadfully tired.
Laters!
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2 comments:
Wow! It sounds like you are having a great time! It is Sunday p. m. here and I am one third of the way through the book. It is great! I almost cried when the pet died. How cruel. I'm naming no names so as not to spoil it for others. I think it is funny, tense,exciting and there will be lots to talk about. Have fun in London. I understand it was very wet there a few days ago so I guess it was good you were in Scotland. I got all the Borders stuff. Carrie helped me and couldn't have been nicer. Love mom
Glad to hear that!
Chris texted me and told me my box was overflowing. :P Now, knowing Chris, that probably meant a really small box, but whatever. I'm excited to see what's in it!
Waterstones gave us nothing. :( It was kind of sad, but they did give us our book and that was the important thing!
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