A Week of Scotland: Day 2

During our weekend stay in Edinburgh, Rose and I stayed in a hostel! I've never stayed in a hostel before so the only knowledge I had of a hostel was the horrible horror movie (called Hostel, for those of you born before 1980) about how the locals in Slovakia torture Americans. The scaredy-cat in me was definitely getting inside my head and making me paranoid.
The hostel we stayed at, Caledonian Backpackers, was anything but scary and intimidating. Almost all of the walls were painted with murals, there were tons of books and brochures at the front lobby, and everyone there seemed to be between the ages of 18 and 30. We think the hostel was previously a private school because the staircases were old and wooden, there was crown molding on the ceiling edges, the windows were as tall as the ceiling, and many of the doorways had plaster detail. It was a very pretty hostel!

The scariest people there were the ones on the walls!

Every wall was painted a different color.

All of the furniture was hand-painted with neat designs on them. It was a really cool place to stay! 

The cafe was where Rose and I spent most of our time when we weren't sleeping. There was a bar, two pool tables, an upright piano (painted, of course, with a screen showing a virtual fire), lots of barstools and couches, a few picnic tables, and graffiti and murals all over the walls. Music was always playing in the background, even during the night.

This is the door that opened to our room

I forgot to take a picture of our room, so credit goes to Rose!

There were 38 beds in the room we stayed in, which were split up between two rooms. We both got bottom bunks right by each other and right by the windows.

The first night we went to bed early, around 9, so we heard everyone come in and get ready for bed. It didn't bother me too much; I just put in my headphones and closed my eyes. The worst part was when the guy sleeping in the bunk above me noisily climbed up to bed... and then snored half the night! There are some things that music can't drown out, and that is when someone is snoring 5 feet away from you.

The second night Rose and I went out, so we didn't go to bed until midnight. I slept like a rock (must have been the wine) until around 4, when a guy sleeping in the other room was snoring. It sounded like a freight train was in the building, he was so loud! I wanted to throw my boots at him.

Overall staying in a hostel was a good experience. We got free breakfast (I'm sure my mom will be happy to hear that), although the breakfast consisted of bread, Nutella (#winning), jams, plain granola cereal and milk, coffee (#winning) , orange juice, and fruit cocktail. Not an impressive breakfast by any means, but it was free, and anything free is golden in my eyes.