Long Post About a Long, Amazing Weekend in Edinburgh

Wow. It was a crazy, amazing, wonderful, whirlwind, exhausting weekend in Edinburgh. Six of my friends and I headed up north on the train to celebrate my friend Christina’s 21^st birthday weekend and we had a great time. We started off our weekend with a breathtakingly beautiful train ride from Lancaster to Edinburgh. The incredible scenery we got to see out of our window was fantastic.

Once we got there, we wandered around fairly aimlessly, not knowing where we were going to stay or what we were going to do. Naturally, we decided our best option was to eat first, and headed straight away to a….Chinese Buffet. That’s right. 7 Americans ate in a Chinese Buffet in Edinburgh. Sarah even got a Mexican beer. Hello there globalization.

After that, I used my fancy phone to look up a hostel near all the places we wanted to see and picked (fairly randomly) the Castle Rock Hostel. And what a fantastic pick it was! The hostel itself was beautiful and ACROSS THE STREET FROM THE CASTLE. It also had a great atmosphere and a great price. I’d also like to point out that from the time we found the hostel until we left, we heard bagpipes playing almost constantly. It was surreal.

That night, we went out to the bars and clubs in Edinburgh to start celebrating Christina’s birthday. The best stop of the night, hands down, was The Scotsman, a tiny pub filled with old Scottish men and a live band. It was fantastic.

The next morning, we drug ourselves out of bed and onto a three hour walking tour of Edinburgh. The tour was through a company that specializes in tours for budget travelers. The tours themselves are free and the guides are paid on a tip-only basis. The tour was fantastic and gave lots of great history. Our guide also indulged our obsession with Harry Potter. He showed us the building that inspired Hogwarts, the café in which JK Rowling wrote the first book, and the graves that inspired some of the names of her characters. We also got to see all of these incredible old buildings. Here are some pictures of how beautiful Edinburgh is.

A church just up the street from our Hostel.

The cemetery with graves of many of the people that provided the names for Harry Potter characters.

The building that inspired Hogwarts!

Later, we headed to The Elephant House (where Harry Potter was written) for lunch. We had decided we wanted to try haggis, and The Elephant House happened to be serving it. As we sat there and ate our traditional Scottish fare (which, though I didn’t have a whole plate myself, I did try and must say was DELICIOUS) we looked through the window JK Rowling did as she wrote. It was such an awesome nerd moment.

This is the view Rowling had as she wrote!

Haggis. It's so much better than you would think.

Later, some of us headed up to the castle for the tour. Edinburgh Castle is built onto a cliff of volcanic rock from way back when the land, that much later became Scotland, was covered in volcanoes and was located by the equator. The Edinburgh Castle must be one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen and the view from the top was incredible. Not to mention, we got to see the Scottish Crown Jewels!

It was also the home of St. Margaret of Scotland, the saint I picked way back in 7^th grade when I was confirmed. The chapel built in her honor is the oldest building on the castle grounds and was built by her son after her death. It was really cool getting to see it.

After all that touring and exploring, we were pretty exhausted. Since it’s the UK and everything closes early, there wasn’t much to do except sit and wait at the train station until our train arrived that night. We were all exhausted.

I have to say that being in Edinburgh was one of the greatest experiences I’ve had here so far. It really made it sink in that I’m in the UK, living and studying for six months, and I get to have all of these incredible experiences. I hope you enjoy all the pictures (there are 188 up on facebook…) and I love and miss you all. <3