Americans and Australians in Scotland

Our first night in Edinburgh, we shared a room with three girls from Sweden and a girl from Australia. We didn't spend much time with the Swedish girls, but the girl from Australia is 18 and has already spent a month and a half traveling around Europe (by herself) on a "gap year," which is apparently quite common in Australia. (She'll begin "university" in West Australia the coming school year.)

In our hostel in Edinburgh

Talking to her, we discovered that both Texans and Australians use the phrase "Tell you what" as a complete sentence. (And as a phrase in general.)

The view of part of the Royal Mile from our hostel window

I'm sure it depends on the expectations, but our hostel was above my expectations! We had a great location, not far from the train station, right along the Royal Mile. We didn't directly interact with many of the other people there (we weren't in the hostel that much), but the mix of personalities and nationalities was obvious.