Backpacking Trip: day 29!!!!

okkkk.....busy day! I started by waking up in my hostel around 6:30am, then headed around the corner to the royal mile (aka high street - it is a street exactly 1 mile long that connects edinburgh castle to the palace of holyroodhouse which is the queens residence in scotland). so, i walked down the the end of the royal mile - past the scottish parliament building and the palace of holyroodhouse, and finally arrived at holyrood park. from here i made the hike up to arthur's seat which is not such an easy climb i must say (especially if u take the most difficult path like i did by accident). but once i made it to the top around 7:45am it was amazing. The weather was perfectly clear (although a bit windy), and there was no other people up there since it was so early. you could see clearly to the ocean, and all of edinburgh, and anything else within many miles. on my way down i went a different way to see the salisbury crags which are basically some cliffs a little bit further down from arthur's seat. I got a ton of pictures, and finally made my way back down (i took what i thought was a shortcut, but it turned out to be a steep, slippery slope covered with slugs - bad choice #2). but i eventually made it back down after only falling once. from here i had some time to spare before my day tour left at 10, so i found a nice little cafe and got a coffee. next, i met at the scotline tour office and boarded my scottish border abbey's tour. our first stop was at Scott's View which was a place where Sir Walter Scott supposedly liked to relax and enjoy the view - and it was a nice view. From there we made our first major stop at Dryburgh abbey. We had about an hour or so to walk around and take some pictures, and then we made it back to the bus. Next stop was the town of Kelso. The first thing i did in Kelso was to check out what was left of the abbey (there wasnt much left), and then I found a really cheap and tasty baguette sandwich restaurant. We eventually got picked up again by our bus, and continued on to our next stop at Jedburgh abbey. This one was a bit more preserved and looked really nice. I had some extra time and found a little park that had free wifi, so i went on the internet for a bit and found out about manny's grand slam last night. So i was in a pretty good mood now as we headed on to Melrose. Once we arrived I went into the Melrose abbey (this one was the most preserved and looked really nice). Oh, and just in case you don't know - the reason most of these abbeys are in ruins is because not only were most of them built in like the 12th century, but often times the english monarchy would have the scottish abbeys destroyed in order to show their power over them. and the scot's would try to rebuild them, and they would just get destroyed again, and back and forth. Ok, so melrose abbey was definitely the nicest out of all of them, and i got a bunch of pictures. after melrose abbey, we made our way back to edinburgh and got back around 5:45pm. on the way back to the hostel i picked up some food and arrived back at my hostel where i took a needed shower. After that i ate some food and nearly gave up trying to get the wireless internet to work, but luckily i went into a different room and it worked much better. Now I'm just workin on this blog and getting caught up on various things on the internet. Hopefully I will get to sleep soon and sleep in tomorrow! Goodnight!