Day Two Scotland: Finding Friends & Walking Tour

Without planning, it turned out that several other friends who I met at the University of Otago were visiting Edinburgh for the Easter Weekend.

Edinburgh Castle in the Fog

So after a HUGE SLEEP (I was impressed I managed to stay awake until 11pm last night, but as I was not much fun on the pub crawl my Aussie counter part decided we best get an early night so we could enjoy the rest of our holiday with friends) We wandered off to find Breakfast, Coffee and meet our friends for a free walking tour at 11am on the royal mile.

A gluten Breakfast was not to hard to find, we found a small bistro serving Omelette’s and cooked breakfast 1 block down from blackfriars street on High Street, which seemed to be filled with locals and tourists so I assumed it was good.

I ordered my Omelette with Ham and Tomato without any dairy which was tasty enough, and my attempt at ordering a soy coffee was short lived as the french waitress thought I was asking for skinny milk, I opted to go coffee less and decided to hit up Starbucks much later in the day… after which time my caffeine headache was in full force.

Full of omelets we walked down the royal mile to meet Scott, Ness and their friend from Wellington to embark on a walking tour in the freezing cold. I was happy to have brought 3 layers of merino wool as this wind in Scotland really does go straight through you. I can see why my relations immigrated to Australia and New Zealand all those years ago!

Edinburgh University

It i interesting being in a place with such a rich history. The walking tour took us to all the sites on the local mile from castles, to grave yards, to the university, to churches, houses, museums and even a statue of a dog.

I highly recommend these walking tours, which seem to be guided by university students studying history who have a real knack for story telling, Mainly because they make money off the tips at the end of the tour.

Once the tour was over we decided it was time for food so we walked over to the helpfully named “New town” to find something off the tourist trail.

Team Edinburgh

We stumbled across a place with 5GBP lunches with burgers, wraps and salads and decided that was for us. I opted to get a burger without the bun, which was delicious and had a home made patty which was gluten free. One of the friends we met up with had a girlfriend who was gluten free, so he gave me some helpful hints on where to shop when I went to London (the next stop on my trip).

With burgers in our belly we went our separate ways and let our new friends rest up at their hostel and get ready for a walking pub crawl we had signed up to with our walking tour guide from this morning.

Katy and I went out shopping (although it was a fairly fruitless search) then decided to have a few mid afternoon alcoholic ginger beers which from what I could read on the packet I THINK were gluten free… AND DELICIOUS! This is definitely something I would like to find in New Zealand.

Gluten Free Eating on the Run

Eating on the run proved problematic for me as the guys wanted to catch a slice of pizza or something quick, I opted for fries and sauce as it was the only fast food I could see that I could eat while power walking to our meeting point for the pub crawl.

I soon had food envy after a friend ordered kebab meat and salad in a takeaway container… luckily she shared so I had some meat and vege in my belly before hitting old town.

The Pub Crawl.

Gluten Free Pub Crawl

The pub crawl sounded fantastic as it cost $11, for this you got taken to 6 bars and one night club, free and subsidised drinks at each bar and free entry to a night club called Hell which was in a old church.

I used this opportunity to test out some local ciders, but decided to stick to vodka soda and lime as I knew to much sugar would upset my eczema and I have found since going gluten free I can not tolerate a lot of sugar or my immune system gets missed up. I decided to opt out of the Whiskey Shots as I was not sure if whiskey was gluten free, but I am pretty sure it is not.

Perhaps the biggest highlight was the 56 drink long jagerbomb train (thats red bull and jagermeister) which the 60+ people on the pub crawl took park in (see the photo). It was a fantastic night, and relatively cheap with the 11$ pub crawl fee covering the majority of my drinks for the night, my friends and I boogied up a storm until the early hours then it was off to bed to sleep up so we were well rested to visit the CASTLE!