Speas and Eichhorn Do Edinburgh, Part Two

Concluding the tale of two Americans gallivanting about Edinburgh for the weekend.

Anyhoos.

So, at the end of last week's installment, I had collected Jacob from the airport, we had visited the Queen (well, sorta), and eaten our weight in delicious Chinese noodles. So great.

Anyhoos, the next day was spent wandering up and down the Royal Mile, including visits to Edinburgh Castle, St. Giles' Cathedral, and various touristy shops. But the main part of the day was spent hiking Arthur's Seat, the extinct volcano in the middle of Holyrood Park, right behind the residence halls where I live. I hadn't made the climb before, and since it's pretty  much something you have to do at some point while in Edinburgh, I figured it would be a great thing to include in Jacob's Edinburgh experience.

Arthur's Seat. Also, I didn't take this picture - I got it from Google. There is no snow on the ground here, thankfully.

Anyhoos...so as you can see, there is a very nice, relatively easy way to climb up the mountain, starting with the footpath that goes off to the left from the top of the road in this picture. That path curves up to the right around the mountain with a very  nice stone staircase that has been placed into the side of the mountain. This makes it pretty simple to climb up to the top, and lets you get up there without losing too much breath.

Yeah. Jacob and I missed that path.

In my defense, I had never made the climb before. But we kept going around to the right, and ended up heaving ourselves up the much, much steeper slope with not much path to speak of -- more like footholds cut into the hill. There was a bit of scrambling up a tiny rock wall portion of the mountain, but we got to the top with little problems.

I was really excited.

So was Jacob.

The view was indeed amazing.

 As you can see, the view made the unexpectedly-arduous trek totally worth it.

So then came the time when we needed to descend - for we had other misadventures to attend to. Since we'd missed the easy way up, we both agreed that we would take it on the way down. As we prepared to descend, we realized that there was a flaw in this plan: we hadn't taken the staircase up. So we didn't know where the staircase began. Crap.

So we started climbing down the middle of the mountain, hoping to intersect with the easy path at some point. Well - we didn't. We ended up climbing down A NEARLY VERTICAL INCLINE OF ALMOST SHEER ROCK. WE WERE LEGITIMATELY ROCK-CLIMBING DOWN AN EXTINCT VOLCANO.

It was pretty awesome. A little scary. But awesome. There were a few times when the rocks under our feet got a little shaky, and we slipped and fell/slid on our asses (by "our" I mean "mine," as I am a traditionally-built lady and weigh significantly more than Jacob McLankyFace). BUT WE WERE VICTORIOUS.

Yeah. We climbed that. THAT'S RIGHT.

Needless to say - the next time I climbed Arthur's Seat, I made sure to find the EASY way up.