Edinburgh, Scotland

This past Wednesday, we left for Edinburgh!  In Europe, they have University reading week, which basically means we don't have classes the whole week, perfect excuse for a trip!  The cheapest route was to take a 10 hour bus overnight, so thats exactly what we did!  The bus ride was super long and very uncomfortable, but we finally made it to beautiful Scotland Thursday morning.

Thursday: We got into Edinburgh at around 8 and couldn't check into our hostel until 2, so we went sightseeing for a bit and then got some lunch at a pub nearby.  We found out that while we were in Scotland, there was a rugby tournament between 6 nations (go England!) right in Edinburgh, so everyone said it would be a crowded weekend.  We got to our hostel, which was really cool!  It's right near the Edinburgh castle and we could practically see it out of the windows.  There were 5 of us, and 12 beds in our room, so luckily, other American internationals filled up the rest of the beds.  That night we got ready for a pub crawl around Edinburgh, which was so much fun!  We went to 5 pubs and a club and it got us really acquainted to the city!

On the bus

The castle!!

Our hostel and the castle

hostel room

pub crawlin

at Vodka Revolution

Friday: We had a walking tour scheduled for 11, so we got up super early to get ready and get some breakfast.  Our tour guide actually worked at our hostel and told us that they found out Thursday night that our hostel had won number 1 extra-large hostel in the world!  So, we were obviously pretty excited that we were staying there!  Our tour was really cool, and really long.  It lasted 3.5 hours and started snowing right when the tour started.  We heard some really cool stories about Scotlands history, including a story about a DOG.  Being an animal lover, especially dogs, this is the only one I'm going to go into detail about on here :) Basically, a man named Greyfriar was a night cop in a sketchy part of Edinburgh.  He got a dog companion to walk around with him in the dark, the dog was the ever frightening Scotty Dog (intimidating, huh?) and he named him Bobby. They were best buds until Greyfriar got some weird disease and died.  Well, Bobby still didn't leave his side and laid on his grave every night for 16 years until he died.  His statue is everywhere and is one of the biggest prides of Edinburgh, so we got to see his precious grave.  Apparentely, people now leave him plane/train tickets to places (one person even left a flight to South Africa with the passenger name Bobby printed on the ticket) right on his grave so that he would (in theory) be able to see the world.  Dogs really are the greatest animals on the planet, and this precious story only confirmed it.  Most people know JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter in Edinburgh, and she got inspiration from the same graveyard that Bobby was buried in.  The names on the tombstones are actually characters in the books!  Not a HP fan myself, I just thought this was a cool fun fact.  Two side by side tombstones actually had the first name on one Sirius and the last name on the other, Black, giving you... Sirius Black!  Just in eyeshot of the graveyard is the school which Hogwarts was adapted from.  Our guide also talked about the huge election coming up in which the decision of independence from Britain may be granted.  It will be really interesting to see if they stay under British rule or separate and gain freedom from royal rule.  After the tour, we went searching around Edinburgh more and finally went to Grassmarket, a street behind our hostel with pubs and went pub hopping.  There were SO MANY Irish people there because the big Ireland v. Scotland game was this weekend.  There was live music almost everywhere and we had a grand old time.

                                    

    

Cathedral

 Bobby's Grave- "may his loyalty & devotion be a lesson to us all" 

different view of the castle  

 In the park 

view of the castle from the park 

Saturday: We had to check out of the hostel pretty early Saturday morning, so we got up, packed and headed out.  Our bus didn't leave until 9:45 that night, so we had all day to explore a bit more.  We ate breakfast at the Elephant House.  This is the cafe that JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter in.  On the front of the cafe, the window says "Birthplace of Harry Potter" and there are pictures and paintings of Rowling inside the cafe.  It was really cool to see her legacy in the cafe, and the food was super awesome.  From there we went to Hollyrood (where the Queen/Duke of Edinburgh live when they visit) which sits on a huge mountain and is absolutely breathtaking.  We walked down the royal mile and admired all of the cashmere shops and finally made our way to the Edinburgh Castle to take pictures at sunset.  It was so beautiful and a great way to end such an amazing trip.  We got some dinner and made our way to the bus station for another 10 hour drive.  

The elephant house!

couldn't resist..

down the royal mile

inside the cathdedral

inside the cathedral

Hollyrood Palace

down the royal mile par deux

view from the castle

view from the castle at sunset

great end to a wonderful trip!

I got about 30 minutes of sleep, so when we got back to London this morning at 6:45, I was beat.  Needless to say, after a 7 hour nap, I'm now well rested! Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend, xoxox