Dundee, Scotland

We arrived in Dundee yesterday evening. Apparently it’s the third largest city in Scotland, next to Glasgow and Edinburgh, but this place isn’t that big at all. It’s on the coast at the mouth of a huge river. Dundee is ridiculously old, and not touristy at all. Almost everyone here is a local, and when we tell anyone we’re from California they ask us what the heck we’re doing in Dundee.  

Janelle and I were trying to save money on food, so we went to Tesco (Brittish Vons that a million times cooler) and bought some sandwiches for dinner. We were so hungry that we just sat down on the side of the road and ate them. A few minutes in, this drunk chick in a super short dress and heals (looked like a Russian prostitute according to Janelle) walked down with some of her friends and just stopped and just looked at us. She stumbled over and asked, “are you two hobos??!” Janelle and I didn’t know what to say, so we just mumbled, “umm no…” and she walked away. We didn’t stop laughing about it until we got back to the hostel and told our Egyptian friend who works here about it. Now everyone in the hostel refers to us as “the hobo siblings”.  Apparently, we Americans are quite the entertainment.  

After we finally finished laughing about it, we decided to go out on the town. Our Egyptian friend told me all the “hot places to chill and club”, he was even nice enough to write them down for me!  We went and tried out The Underground, and Liquid. 

So like 6 hours later, we made our way back to the hostel. And who was there watching TV to greet us… our awesome Egyptian friend!! We don’t actually know his name, but Janelle thought she her some guy call him Muhammad, but they laughed afterwards.  We don’t know if he was joking or not, so I just call him Captain. He thinks it’s a funny nickname and responds to it, but has no clue we don’t actually know his name.

I don’t remember much from last night, but I remember Captain leaving the TV room shortly after we got in (like 4am?), only to return a few minutes later with a ton of cheese he shared. It was an awesome night. We slept until almost 4pm today, then went on a hike. 

Janelle, having lived in San Francisco for a few years now, considered it only a “walk”.  Me, being a lazy beach boy, considered it much more of a “trek”.  Whatever it was, we went by a castle that turned out to be more of a manner house, then we climbed to the top of Law Hill. This is at the very top of the most propionate hill in Dundee and gives an absolutely remarkable view of the city, the river, the ocean, and hills as fare as the eye can see! We spent over an hour up there just in awe of the view.