Edinburgh Saturday

Yesterday, the International Student Society "organized" a trip to Edinburgh. By organized, I mean they sent us an email about meeting at the train station, and then we all stood in a group until someone told us what to do with ourselves. At first, we really misunderstood the guy and thought a return ticket (that's UK for round trip) was going to be £20. We debated whether or not that was truly worth it, and decided we might as well just go for it. Good thing we did, because it turned out it WAS £20...for a group of four! So, long story short, we got a really cheap train ticket to Edinburgh. Here are some photos of this part of the trip for your viewing pleasure:

Ok, so I'm not great at doing layouts on this thing. But the top picture is the group I went with: Alyssa, Crystal, Shauna, and Brady. The picture to the left is the Glasgow train station. Very clean.

We were all astonished, because it was sunny almost all day! The train ride through the country was beautifully green and very Scottish (read: there were a lot of sheep). When we arrived, we stood around like tourists, taking photos and wondering if the train had somehow gotten us out of the UK without our knowledge because it was so sunny. I was upset for awhile that I hadn't packed my sunglasses for the trip--they've been sitting unused in my drawer since I arrived!

After a coffee shop fuel-up, we ventured off towards the Edinburgh castle, which we had decided was our first priority in the city. While Glasgow has many old, beautiful buildings (particularly those on campus!), it's a much more modern city than Edinburgh in a lot of ways. The whole industrial feel of Glasgow was completely absent from Edinburgh. It was super touristy in places, but others had a sort of ancient glamor that we appreciated. Accepting that the day was going to be a touristy one, we all got our cameras out and started taking photos of anything and everything that caught our eyes. We also accosted a number of innocent passers-by and ended up with a lot of group photos.

We passed through parts of "The Scottish Whiskey Experience" and considered taking the full tour, but headed on up to the castle instead. There, we spent the majority of the day. (And almost all of the sunlight!) Edinburgh castle is a truly beautiful place, and well worth the £10 it cost to get in. Not only were the castle grounds beautiful, but the castle's position on a hill allowed us some great panoramic views of Edinburgh. While we didn't explore a great deal of the city, we got to see a whole lot of it.

Above: a view from the entrance to the castle of part of the Royal Mile and Arthur's Seat in the background. Below: a view of the city from one of the lookout points.

I'm always shocked by how friendly everyone is. I'd been warned that Edinburgh was more of a tourist trap, and so people aren't as friendly as the Glaswegians I've come to know and love. But while we were traveling around the castle, we ran into a really great security guard named Jim. He was stationed in a really beautiful cathedral in the center of the castle. He pulled us aside and asked us a few questions about where we were from, then regaled us with all these interesting facts about famous people and things that have come out of Scotland. I was amazed at how knowledgeable he was. We thanked him for his stories and walked out of the cathedral. A few minutes later, though, he found us again and guided us into the Royal Apartments, where he took this photo for us:
It's a little blurry, but you get the idea. He also threatened to steal my camera!

From the Royal Apartments, we made our way up to see the crown jewels and the coronation stone. While these are used to crown kings and queens in London, they actually belong to Scotland and have been here since the Scottish browbeat the English into giving them back. The coronation stone was my favorite, even though all the jewels were so beautiful. Jim said that the majority of tourists don't understand what such an ugly rock is doing in the display case with all of the finery. I liked it just for that reason. It's really just a hunk of gray stone, but every Scottish king/queen to be crowned since Robert the Bruce has been crowned on that stone. Pretty cool eh?

Anyway, there were many different places in Edinburgh castle, and I'll save everyone the tedium of reading a description of them all. In short, we also saw the dungeon, the military prison (which looked a little too much like my single here for my tastes...), a bunch of dioramas of things like Mary, Queen of Scots and the coronation process, etc. If you're interested, I've got photos of almost everything we saw (except the coronation stone and crown jewels--no photography in there).

After visiting the castle, we walked down the Royal Mile a bit. We went into a tartan weaving factory, where I picked up a Rose clan hunting tartan scarf. I also discovered that there's a Taylor plaid--but we aren't really sure yet whether that's our family or not (as we know that we Taylors came from Wales!). Leaving the factory, we found St Giles' Cathedral:
After this point, rain started coming in. The skies darkened ominously and we decided it was time to find a pub for some dinner. Surprisingly, most of the shops and things closed at 6, so we decided to catch a train back to Glasgow at around 6:30.

All in all, a very good day in the city. I talked to my flatmate about it a little this morning, and she agrees with me that Edinburgh is the city you want to visit, and Glasgow the city you want to live in. I wholeheartedly agree! I was a little worried that I would like Edinburgh too much and wish I'd gone there for the semester, but that wasn't the case. There's something more livable about Glasgow, even though it's certainly a rougher city.

Clearly, this post had a lot more photos than my previous ones did. That's because I finally got the little thingy I needed to upload my photos from my new fancy pants camera. At a pound store. FOR A POUND. (Ok, obviously.) But anyway, that's cool because I thought it was going to be more like £10 and I'd rather be spending that kind of money on castles and whatnot! But anyway, if you are interested in my life, want some more photos, and are unable to view everything I've posted on facebook, shoot me an email or comment on a post and I'll gladly send you some more! Because I'm pretty much an expert photographer (translation: I take 100s of 1000s of photos and 20 of them come out well).

Stay tuned!