Trip to Edinburgh

Michael and I set out for Edinburgh and after divining a little bit, we found our couchsurfing host's place. We left the car there and headed downtown for a walk along the Royal Mile. Over the next couple of days we hiked up Arthur's Seat, walked all over the city and drank a lot of beer. Last night we went to a few places, but ended up at a pub that had live folk music. The music wasn't much to talk about -in fact, we couldn't even hear it -- but it turned out to be a couchsurfing meeting place. I met some people from France, Canada, Germany, Poland, Portugal, and a few other places. Later, we walked home and ran into a guy in a kilt. Michael wanted me to ask him if he was a true Scotsman (which I was too embarrassed to do), so he asked. The man said yes, to which Michael asked him to prove it. Subsequently, the guy lifted up his kilt to reveal that he wasn't wearing any underwear (thus proving his authenticity). Michael said it was not legitimate because he could have worn a G-string since he didn't show us his naughty parts, but I saw enough to be convinced. At some point we came across the Heart of Midlothian, a spot along the sidewalk where Michael said he wanted to spit. Apparently people spit on it and we weren't sure why, but we were like, "When in Rome . . ." so we did. We weren't sure if it was for good luck for anyone or only Scots (and thus we were now doomed) or what, but later we looked it up and saw this bit of info about it.
We also did some more walking around through neighborhoods, took a doubledecker bus through Leith, and walked through botanical gardens.
The next day we got up and decided to take the long way home, heading over the Forth of Firth, looking at the car and rail bridges. We headed out to Loch Leven, stumbled upon a really cool area called the Rumbling Bridge, a town called Dollar (which I think has it's origins in a derivation of the French word for pain, not a currency that is presently having some pain), hung out in strange local bar in Glasgow, all before driving through to Carlisle and Hadrian's Wall country on the way home. This video is of a guy who looks like Elton John singing karaoke to a U2 song and a very drunk patron dancing. Michael was sure I was going to get pummeled if anyone figured out I was filming what was going on because this seemed like quite a rough place.