Edinburgh, Part I

Finally getting around to making this post. Yay! A few friends and I decided to take a day trip into Edinburgh on Saturday. For those of you who don't know, that is the capitol of Scotland. And there are a lot of people there. And they walk everywhere. By everywhere, I mean everywhere that's in your way.

But besides that, Edinburgh is pretty awesome. We walked around acting lost for a while, just because it is slightly overwhelming. We found a place to sit down and eat some food, mostly to gather ourselves again. We walked down the Royal Mile, which is much like the Magnificent Mile for those of you in the Chicago area. Lots of different shops and places to eat and what not. The only difference is there is no ginormous castle at the end of the Magnificent Mile.

Sadly, we did not go into the castle. But it looks pretty sweet. The international summer school people are taking us to Edinburgh on Thursday though, so hopefully I'll get to go in. Which is going to be pretty awesome, because who doesn't like to tour castles? Beyond looking at the castle, we found this really sweet tour to go on. It is a place called Mary King's Close, which is basically an old part of the city that is now underground and used to support the new city chambers building. What happened was that after the plague, this area of town was shut down and cut off. It wasn't really deemed livable, but instead of removing all the existing structures - which would have been crazy expensive - they cut off the tops of the buildings and used the rest as the support for the city chambers. But you can still go down and see the old houses and buildings and streets that were a part of Mary King's Close. A close is essentially a very, very narrow street that turns off the main street (the Royal Mile in this case) and then angles down sharply. Very sharply. And Mary King's Close is the one you tour, mainly because it's the nicest one to still exist. At least that's what I believe.

So that was cool. But it was kinda creepy, thinking of all the people that lived in such cramped quarters, throwing all their sewage waste into the street to run down into the small loch at the bottom that also doubled as their drinking water...but at least we don't have to live in times like that any more! After that, we decided to go complete my mission of the day - finding the famous Elephant House Cafe. Again, for those who don't know, this cafe is now considered the "birthplace" of Harry Potter, because J.K. Rowling would often frequent this cafe when writing her famous series. I, of course, had to go, because of a certain person in my life who is a huuuge fan of Harry Potter. It's a lovely little place though, with good drinks and decent food that are way overpriced because they can do that to capitalize on the fact that it is kind of famous now. But of course I still ate there. Mission accomplished.

And that was my trip to Edinburgh. Nothing really exciting, but it was fun to just walk around the city for a while. There were so many street performers out as well. I saw my first bagpipe player that was a woman. I saw a man lying on a bed of nails. Lots of street musicians, adding a nice pleasant atmosphere to the walk. I also met two men, dressed as Darth Vader and a stormtrooper. The stormtrooper man actually lived in Michigan for a while, so he was extremely excited when I told him I was from Michigan. But yeah. An exciting journey! I can't wait to go back and explore some more. Until next time...