A City of Stone

This past weekend I took a trip to Edinburgh with API. The three other API programs in Ireland came on the excursion too. We left on Friday morning and flew in to Edinburgh around noon time. The plane we flew on was probably the smallest plane I've ever been on... it had propellers! We even had to walk out on the tarmac to board it.

Flying over Scotland

Once we landed, we took a bus to the hotel then walked to Edinburgh Castle. I didn't know what kind of castle it was going to be and was slightly surprised to see how grand it was. This was our first view....

Before we entered the castle we arrived on the Royal Mile, which is the busiest street in Edinburgh. It was at this point that I realized everything in Edinburgh was made of stone. All the houses were stone, the buildings were stone, the street of the Royal Mile was stone, even the castle was stone with a stone wall surrounding it. It all felt very medieval and Scottish... especially the bag piper than can be heard no matter where you walked.

The castle turned out to be something very similar to the Tower of London. There were different museums related to war generals and calvary and prisoner of war housing. They even had the Scottish jewels in the basement of one of the main buildings like the Tower of London. The day was absolutely beautiful though. The sun was shining and it was pretty warm for being so far north compared to Cork. The castle was on the top of a huge hill that over looked the entire city which provided stunning views.

 They even had canons! Here's a picture of Emily trying to ride the canon...

Just as we were leaving the castle the sun was setting, so obviously I had to take lots of pictures.

Easily my favorite picture I've ever taken

To finish off the night, we took a walking tour of the Royal Mile. It got incredibly cold by the time the sun set, and the tour guide was an older woman who you could barely hear unless you were standing directly in front of her. So needless to say I only heard half of what she said in the two hours we were walking. The Royal Mile was pretty cool though, it was lined with cashmere shops, fudge shops, scottish kilts/ tartan shops, Scottish whiskey shops, and little cafés of course. The most interesting part of the tour was the fact that she pointed out all the hidden places on the Royal Mile. These being the little side streets called a "close". They were basically little alley ways in the midst of all these shops and were extremely dark, usually lit with only one dim light. They were definitely very creepy, especially the fact that people live down them! We saw one guy walk down a completely pitch black alley way and unlock his door, I'm still wondering how he found his key in the darkness.

On Saturday we visited the National Gallery of Scotland. Then took a tour of Mary King's Close. That was pretty much an underground alley where we toured the houses that people once lived in. At one time, the close was not built on top of and housed about 600 people on the street. The street was extremely narrow and had buildings 12 stories high on both sides that people lived in. The people would climb wooden fire escape- like stairs on the outside of the building to get to their front door... imagine being on the twelfth floor!  When the black plaque hit the close lost about half of its inhabitants by the end of it. The street was so dirty and full of rats and fleas that the plaque must have spread extremely quickly. Now there's a building sat right on top of the close and the houses are still underneath. It's like a lost city under there, as if everything was preserved while a new life took place above it.

here's a picture of a close... not Mary King's Close though. Look how narrow it is!

After the close we headed to the Camera Obscurity and World of Illusions museum, but first stopping to take a picture with the bag piper.

Amanda and I with a man in a kilt

The camera obscurity museum was so awesome. It was probably one of the coolest museums I've ever been to. They had tons of fun things, like a mirror maze, a vortex, fun house mirrors, and mega telescopes that zoomed in on people walking around on the street below. We definitely had a ton of fun playing around with all the cool things they had in there, I felt like I was 5 again.

The castle from the dome of the museum

 This is George Heriot's School; the private school that JK Rowling based Hogwarts off of. Edinburgh was full of Harry Potter related things, after all it was written written there! If I knew more about Harry Potter I would have taken more pictures of Harry Potter related things (sorry Amanda, Brenden, and Alec! You're just going to have to go there yourself to see the Elephant house) 

The rest of Saturday was pretty relaxed. We had tea time (how cute) and then grabbed dinner after walking around Princes St. which is the other big street in Edinburgh. It's where all the modern shops are.

Sunday we went to see the Royal Yacht Britannia. Let's just say it was very ROYAL. It had to be the biggest yacht ever. I'm pretty sure it shouldn't even be classified as a yacht. I felt like I was in a floating mansion. They had two, yes TWO, dining halls. One was for their everyday dinners and the other was a huge dinning table in a giant hall where they would host dinner parties and entertain guests like the President. Then they had the sailors mess halls and dining rooms. Oh, and of course the Tea Room was an entirely separate room.

The regular dining table

The fancy dining table

Kelly and I trying to be sailors...

From the Britannia we went to the airport, we were found out our plane was delayed by 5 hours. Apparently the plane we were waiting for was stuck in bad weather so we had to wait for it to come back to Scotland. The waiting wasn't too much of a waste of time, I finally got to try haggis! Haggis is one of the traditional Scottish foods that I had to try no matter what. It was surprisingly pretty good, although I didn't have high expectations for it to begin with. After all it's sheep insides with oatmeal and other spices. I'm so sorry little lamb that I held last week. I promise I won't eat you!

First bite of Haggis!

And there you have it! My trip to Edinburgh.
I'd go back. But next time, I want to see the Loch Ness