Scotland

This weekend I traveled back to the UK, this time to Scotland. I finally arrived in Edinburgh late Friday night (technically early Saturday morning). I met up with my friends studying in Sweden for the semester (one of whom was Alisha, my good friend from home). I was exhausted by the time I got to the hostel, so I just passed out. Saturday morning, we were able to sleep in a bit and then took a 3.5 hour walking tour through the city. We saw all the major sites and learned about all the history of the city. There was even a parade honoring soldiers returning from Afghanistan (this even included men in kilts playing bagpipes). After the tour we grabbed some food at the Elephant House Cafe, where J.K. Rowling wrote the first two Harry Potter books. The walls of the bathrooms in the cafe are full of notes to the author thanking her for writing the series. After this, we went to the graveyard where she got the names McGonagall and Tom Riddle. That was actually really cool! We then went to the Edinburgh Castle and got a great view of the city. Saturday night we took another tour, except this one was a ghost tour that told about the scary mysteries of Edinburgh. A good portion of this tour was on a high point in the city where we got a beautiful view at sunset. The tour ended with a creepy story of a man who, in 2002, murdered his friend and drank his blood hoping to become a vampire...yeah, super weird. Anyway, after the tour, we grabbed a delicious dinner and then passed out at the hostel. 

Sunday morning we woke up, had breakfast, and then headed out for our tour of the Lowlands and Highlands. Our Scottish tour guide, Shelby, was hilarious as she told us the historical stories of the area, played music and sang some of her own songs, and drove us through the winding roads up the mountains. Our first stop was about an hour outside of Edinburgh at Sterling Castle. The castle was great, but the surrounding landscape was even more beautiful. From here, we headed to Loch Lomond with even more beautiful mountainous landscape. We stopped for lunch in a small town and then in a village by a lake. Here, we literally scaffolded the side of a mountain to get a great view! It was an amazing trip, but we were definitely tired when we got back to Edinburgh. We had a dinner at a popular pub, The World's End, and then did a pub crawl. We were only three bars in when we decided we were too tired to keep going, so we just headed back to the hostel and fell asleep. 

Monday morning we had to wake up a bit earlier so we could get in one last tourist sight before our flights back to Paris/Sweden. After breakfast, we climbed yet a second mountain (actually, it's a former volcano), Arthur's Seat. It was definitely a harder climb than I expected, but it was beautiful. The view from the highest point was well worth the sweat. To one side was the city, the other was the ocean, and then the mountains. It was also insanely windy at the top! After spending some time on Arthur's Seat, we climbed back down and did some souvenir shopping. By then it was time to head back to the airport  to catch my flight. Overall, it was a perfect weekend!!