HostelBloggers are a footloose bunch. Although we’re theoretically based in London, it’s rare that one of us isn’t out there in the great wide world.
Anyway, here’s a handful of recent snaps from South America that have (rather thoughtfully) been brought back to the office to make us jealous. They’re pretty spectacular (if we do say so ourselves!)
It’s hard to think of anywhere that has more to offer a budget traveler than South America. There’s obviously awe-inspiring nature…
The Iguazu Falls on the border of Argentina and Brazil
Moving away from the horror of Edinburgh’s past to the fantastic Grassmarket. Curling down from the Cowgate, and lined with colorfully fronted shops, bars and restaurants, it’s one of the more unusual - and striking - streets to be found anywhere in the world.
What makes it so unusual is its combination of age and height.
Built over a series of hills, the scale of the city is one of the things that first strikes you.
And Grassmarket is perhaps the most impressive example of Edinburgh’s oddly high-rise architecture.
More gruesome tales of Edinburgh, this time from Greyfriars Kirkyard.
But before we get onto it, there’s the (infinitely less interesting) tale of ‘Greyfriars Bobby’ to mention.
Back in 1859 a man died and was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard. Shortly after his death, his faithful-to-the-last Skye Terrier, Bobby, was found to be keeping a lonely vigil at his dead master’s tomb. Cue much cooing (the dog was fed until he, too, shuffled off 14 years later) and eventual Disneyfication.
Now his tomb…
And the cutesy statue outside…
…stand as an everlasting shrine to the sentimental.
But Greyfriars Kirkyard is also the scene of a much more gripping tale:
The lady was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. And she was laid out in all her ceremonial finery in her family crypt.
But her corpse hadn’t been there long before the crypt was broken into by body snatchers (this being the stomping ground of Burke and Hare, after all).
The ghoulish grave robbers started to strip the dead woman of all her valuables, only stopping when they reached one ring that proved particularly hard to remove.
Undeterred, they started to hack at the dead woman’s finger… only the woman wasn’t dead at all! And finding herself laid out in a crypt, having her finger sawn off by body snatchers, proceeded to scream blue murder.
So terrified were the pair at the woman’s Lazarus-like rising from the dead that they fainted, and were arrested shortly afterwards.
Or so the story goes…
And frankly, given a story like that one, old Bobby would’ve had to do a lot more than sit by a grave and brood for 14 years to get HostelBloggers’ full attention!
Veering wildly from the ridiculous to the sublime, we spent the morning clambering up two of Edinburgh’s hills: Calton Hill and Arthur’s Seat. Jumping on the opportunity to get some Edinburgh video footage, we got the cameras out and did a couple of sweeping pans of the glorious panoramas laid out at our feet.
Rising up just a little to the east of the New Town, Calton Hill is crowned by a curious landmark (visible on the footage at 0:16): the unfinished National Monument. There’s something about its utterly out of place Grecian grandeur that’s actually really rather endearing…
There’s a shot of the spectacular Arthur’s Seat, too, (of which more below) at 0:50 on the video.
But, its folly aside, Calton Hill is dwarved in every way by the magnificent Arthur’s Seat. Its appeal lies in the genuinely wild slice of the Highlands it brings to the heart of Edinburgh. As you climb up through the stunning Holyrood Park, you can check out Salisbury Crags, the evocative ruins of Holyrood Abbey, and ponder the unlikely possibility of the Arthurian myth that hangs over it.
The footage draws to a dramatic close with a gradual zoom back down onto Calton Hill. And so, rather neatly, does this post.
Feeling suitably revived after a vege-mighty breakfast, we pulled our professional socks up and took to the streets.
The thing about Edinburgh is that it’s got a proper skyline. Not a tangled mess of glittering steel and concrete, but a wonderful, ancient city view that not many other places can match.
Now we come to think about it, there’s nothing that quite brings a city to life like a looming great hill topped with a grand historical monument. Athens is obviously right up there - Granada, Jodhpur, Budapest, Bratislava and a handful of others, too. Another one for a future post, I suppose…
Anyway, these sightseeing snaps of some of the best views of Edinburgh Castle were taken from down in St Cuthbert’s Kirkyard (alongside Princes Street Gardens). Framed by the crumbling tombstones, it makes an even more spectacular sight than usual.
Backpackers in London keen to be part of a public art exposition should get along to Trafalgar Square in the coming months.
Over the course of a period of 100 days, members of the public will be given the opportunity to stand on a plinth – day and night – for an hour.
The artist, Antony Gormley, is quoted as saying: “Through elevation on to the plinth and removal from common ground, the body becomes a metaphor, a symbol and allows us to reflect on the diversity, vulnerability and particularity of the individual in contemporary society.”
Whether or not that’s any consolation for standing on a plinth, in the rain, at four in the morning, remains to be seen.
An old ‘un but a good ‘un. This video from vagabonding.com is of one of India’s more unusual religious sites: the ‘Rat Temple’ of Karni Mata in Rajasthan.
Definitely not one for the squeamish or the musophobic!
From the merely curious (the woman swinging a child around) to the totally bizarre (like the upside down statue of Charles La Trobe in Melbourne) Oddee’s roundup of the world’s most bizarre statues throws up a couple of real crackers.
Standing outside the Ernst & Young building on 725 South Figueroa in Los Angeles, the above statue is presumably a caustic attack on faceless global capitalism. Or it might just be a man with his head stuck in a brick wall…
In any case, full marks to the surprisingly witty caption entries on accountingweb.co.uk (and I promise this is the last time you’ll ever see them mentioned on HostelBloggers!!!):
