Edinburgh was a very cool city, and felt extremely relaxing to me. It is probably my favorite city of the ones I have visited so far, and I would have liked to spend more time there than we had!
We began, Saturday evening, with a tour of the city shortly after arriving at our hostel. It quickly became clear that there was not much redesigning of the roads done in the older parts of the city. The majority of busy-ness is still centered around the Royal Mile, a road which stretches from Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood Palace, and many of the original alleyways are still in existence. We walked along the former city wall, up the Royal Mile, past the cafe where JK Rowling wrote large portions of her first Harry Potter novel (!) and past the grave of Greyfriar's Bobby, a dog who had sat on his owner's grave for 14 years, and then finally up to Edinburgh Castle at sunset. Following this, we had some very good baked potatoes, and wandered for a little while before heading back to the hostel for the night.
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| Where JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone |
The next morning, we began our day with a tour of Edinburgh Castle. This was probably my favorite castle that we've seen so far. It is still an extremely well-kept castle with a very lived-in feel, though not with the feel of fantastic wealth, as other places we've visited have had. This felt much more like we were visiting someone's home.
There has been human settlement on the Castle Rock since at least the 2nd century AD, and a royal castle since at least the 12th century, so it was very cool to see all of the aspects that went into maintaining an operational defensive castle.
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| Cemetery for Officers' Dogs |
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| Mons Meg, a HUGE cannon |
Once we were done at the castle, a few of us ventured over to a hill we had noticed, which turned out to be an extinct volcano called "Arthur's Seat." A brief climb later, we were at the highest point in the surrounding area with a good view of the city to one side and the sea to another, which was very nice. The volcanic rock at the top was slippery, but it was a nice, warming walk on a cold day.
After this, we had a scheduled tour at the "Scotch Whisky Experience," where we got a brief overview of how Scotch Whisky is made and aged, as well as the different regions of Scotch classification, Highland, Lowland, Islay, and Speyside. We then got to pick one of these regions to sample a whisky from that region. I chose the Islay and I was very happy with that choice. The Laphroaig was very smoky and made me feel like it would go very well with relaxing in front of a fireplace, so I was pleased with that. We then got a glimpse of the largest collection of Scotch in the world, over 2000 bottles.
Finally, we had a nice group dinner with our administrator and her husband before going back to our rooms. We woke up early and caught the train home into King's Cross station, so I took the opportunity to snap a picture Platform 9 3/4, although I didn't feel the need to wait in line to get my picture with it!
All in all, I really enjoyed Edinburgh and would love to explore Scotland in some more depth. I could have spent a full day with the audio guide in the castle alone, so hopefully I'll get to come back to Scotland someday to see what the rest of the nation is all about!
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