Castles can contain cool ceilings.

For example...

This is a picture of the ceiling in one of the rooms in Stirling Castle. Yesterday I went on a day trip to Stirling with Brandon - after mass confusion over who was and wasn't actually going. Brandon and Richie had planned this trip, but 9:45 came around and Richie wasn't answering calls or texts. Brandon tried calling him for the next few HOURS with no reply, and by this point we were getting worried. It's normal for someone to sleep in past 10, but not exactly normal for them to not contact you until 4 pm. Funnily enough, Richie had been getting all of Brandon's texts and calls throughout the day, but couldn't reply to them because his little pay-as-you-go phone was out of minutes and texts. Turns out he just wasn't feeling well.

We took a taxi to Waverly Station, whereupon I entered my first train station ever, to take my first train ride ever. My flatmate Katy (from Manchester, England) was literally shocked when I mentioned I'd never been on a train. For my first train experience, I'd say it went pretty well. We bought our tickets around 10:30 (9.40 pounds for a round trip ticket; around $15.) and saw a train was leaving at 10:33, so we ran. We made it, and I settled in for the ~1 hour ride to Stirling.

I was lucky in that it was a nice, sunny day, opposed to the rainy-icy-snow-sleet that Edinburgh received on Friday night. Our tentative itinerary for the day was lunch, Church of the Holy Rude, and Stirling Castle. Seems pretty do-able, right? We wandered a bit, looking for a place to eat, and settled on Beanscene, a cafe/coffeeshop chain in the UK. The hot chocolate was decent... but Caribou's is better. We then trekked up an icy slope (Stirling had apparently got more snow than sleet on Friday...and for some reason people keep putting castles on hills.) to get to our first stop, the Church of the Holy Rude. 

The Church was founded in 1129 and is the second oldest building in Stirling, though it was rebuilt in the 15th century after being destroyed by a fire. It has original stained glass from the 15th century, which we were hoping to see. Sadly the church isn't open to visitors until May 1st, so I'm hoping to go back. From there, we continued through the churchyard on a snow-filled "path" (random footprints in 4-5 inches of snow = path) to Stirling Castle.

Stirling Castle

It was very Castle-y, with the Queen's Bedchamber, the Queen's Inner Room, the Queen's Outer Room, the Queen's Sitting Room, the Queen's Standing Room, the Queen's Basket-weaving Room, the Queen's Bagpipe-Playing Room, and... you get the point. There were many rooms!

The Queen's Bedchamber

The Queen's Inner Hall

Part of the Great Hall

Don't let my joking fool you, though. I am forever in awe of the history behind every building I vist in Scotland. I mean, Mary, Queen of Scots, was crowned in this chapel in 1543: 

After seeing the castle, we made our way to a coffeeshop (much better hot chocolate here than at Beanscene. I'm keeping tabs on hot chocolate quality at all of these, don't worry.) before heading on the train back to Edinburgh. Our first train was cancelled due to a signaling problem, but we only had to wait 10-15 minutes for another one. This train was packed. There must have been a football or rugby game last night, because there were several seemingly-intoxicated young men, standing near the front of the train, randomly singing and shouting. A man sitting down several rows away would occasionally join in by yelling in a strange voice. It was an interesting journey. My proud moment of the night was navigating from the train station to my flat by myself. Though it is easy once you find the main road, the trick is... finding the main road. 

I'll update this in a few days about my birthday and my friends and I's new local pub (something is grammatically wrong there..).