Arrival in Edinburgh and the Passive Aggressive Hostel

Well, it's been a pretty busy week so far. We got here on Monday just before 8am, and by the end of the day we had already seen one available apartment (which was a bit scuzzy, to be honest), and had put in requests to view 8 or 9 others, managed to fit in some afternoon sleeping (since the overnight bus was somewhat less than comfortable) and found a Wetherspoons pub in the evening. On Tuesday, we started getting replies to our viewing requests, and the first rental agency we talked to had three places we were interested in, so they arranged for us to see them all that afternoon, with the rental agent driving us from one place to the next, which I thought was pretty cool. We decided that we really wanted one of them, so our deposit is in, and our applications go in today. More on that a little later on.

I have to admit, I'm really excited about the prospect of having an apartment. The hostel we've been staying at has been a little unfriendly and pretty loud (especially last night), but I think the funniest thing is how it could almost double as the Edinburgh Museum of Passive Aggressive Messages. You can't spit without hitting a poster telling you what you can or can't do here, so I decided to take some pictures.


Just look at the number of exclamation marks Nicola uses here. I'm not really sure who Nicola is, but a lot of the signs around here seem to be hers. I wonder if she'd be any fun to hang out with. Here's another one I found in the showers:


My favorite part is the If you wish to stay warm... opening. The irony being that this hostel is freezing all the time. Even with the door closed, it's still uncomfortably cold. Anyway, moving along.


These guys are really serious about the alcohol and drug thing, and it's probably because they have a bar downstairs, which you have to get someone from reception upstairs to come and unlock to serve you something. I do enjoy the use of the word heed though. And I'm assuming this is another Nicola sign based on the same font and use of multiple exclamation marks. And bonus points for the highlighting of any alcohol. Anyway, I made a Picasa photoset of posters if anyone is interested.

Anyway, yesterday was our last night in that hostel. Tonight, we've decided to step it up a notch, and we're going to a hotel on Princes Street for the night. This weekend, we've booked into a different hostel which is a bit out of town, but it looks totally fantastic. There's a shuttle bus that comes and goes downtown, although I think we might just lay low near the Firth of Forth for the weekend. We haven't really done a whole lot of sightseeing yet, since we've been so busy trying to get ourselves organized, but maybe sometime next week I can get some photos of the actual city. Needless to say, it's gorgeous here.

More to come soon!