Edinburgh

A week after leaving for Dublin, I packed my bright orange backpack for another amazing journey, this time, to Edinburgh, Scotland (pronounced ed-in-borough). We leave school to make our way to the bus station to catch our bus. The drive should take 9 hours from London to Scotland; our estimated arrival being 7:35 am. We board the bus, and I immediately know this is going to be a looooong ride. The bus is packed; luckily I am sitting next to my friend Julie and not a stranger. I chose the window seat. Big mistake. Huge. We are not even out of London and my nose is frozen. The bus driver had the air conditioning on and the vent is right above my head. The bus was unbelievably cold, and I got absolutely no sleep. I kept waking up as soon as I dozed off and could not get comfortable. At one point, I made my way from the back of the coach up to the diver and politely asked him to turn the air off, and he snapped at me and said he had the heat on. I rolled my eyes and went back to my seat, rearranging my coat and flannel over my legs. We eventually made it to Edinburgh. TWO hours early. Normally this would be a reason to celebrate, but it was 5 am. What on earth could we do in a foreign city at 5 in the bloody morning? We walked out of the train station, our eyes heavy and brains exhausted. We walked down the street for a couple blocks and found a McDonalds. It was open and had a "free wifi" sign. We walked in and found a seat upstairs. After having breakfast (the first time in I don't even know how many years I have eaten McDonalds), we actually fell asleep. The four of us, not so much Sophie at this point, were sick. I got sick before going to Dublin and was still battling it despite my saily regimine of Sudafed, and Julie and Lisangi were just getting it. I did not care what any of the five people in that restaurant thought of me or my friends; I just put my head down on my backpack and fell asleep for over an hour. Julie woke us up and we decided it was time to go. It was finally light out. 8 am. We walked out of McDonalds and made our way to the main road. As soon as I looked up, I gasped. I could not believe how beautiful that city is. It looked so old, and I had no idea because we arrived in the dark. It was such a pleasant surprise.

This is what we saw in the first twenty minutes of being in the capital city. The buildings are so beautiful. Edinburgh was built upon Castle hill, but the modern city is built on seven hills. The buildings in the Old Town (the side of the city that houses the castle) date back to before the 18th century. After London, Edinburgh is the second most visited place in the United Kingdom. 

I think this picture represents our minds. 

Our brains were mush at this point. 

This is the Highland Cow. Adorable!! There are 

postcards of this animal all over the city.

I wish we saw one in person though. 

The castle

Sophie. She is one of the sweetest people

I have ever met. 

Alternate view

The weather in Scotland was absolutely beautiful, which rarely happens. It was like a perfect September day in New Jersey. At one point, I was wearing a tshirt and jeans. This helped our moods. We could have all been in terrible moods, and rightfully so. We were running on zero hours of sleep and could have snapped on each other. I was proud of us, though. No one snapped and no one fought. We were all making the best of a situation and our time here is too short to be tired and to complain about it. If it was raining; however, I am sure our moods would have been drastically different. 

We went on a hike to Arthur’s seat, a giant hill in the middle of the city. It is over 822 ft high and is part of the chain of extinct volcanoes that formed the landscape of the area. Before taking the bus to the entrance of the park, we stopped at Tesco (the food store in the UK) and bought ourselves some food for a picnic. We bought grapes, strawberries, yogurt, cheese balls, and I found some ginger ale. I have been looking all over London for ginger ale and cannot find it anywhere, so when I found Schweppes in Tesco in Scotland, I almost had a heart attack. (Before boarding the bus, we made a pit stop to Tesco and I bought six liters to bring back to London because I miss my soda so much. I went to the food store in London this afternoon, though, and found ginger ale. I guess I wasn't looking hard enough before going to Scotland). We had our little picnic with the setting sun and the four of us agreed it was a wonderful way to spend the day. 

Little hikers

It makes it look like I purposely wanted it to look

like night and day, but it was a complete accident.

Yes, that is the ocean, but more on that later...

 We had a little too much fun with silhouette pictures.

We must have spent 30 minutes doing that.

Being my Buddhist self.

We hiked all the way up to that spot. 

Sophie and I are huge Harry Potter fans. We read all of the books and watched the movies. We have conversations about which book is better and went to the Harry Potter studio together. Julie likes HP too, but not as much as the two of us. So when we went to Scotland, it was imperative that we went to the cafe where JK Rowling would sit and work on the first two HP books. The Elephant House. We later went and found the grave stones that are said to have inspired JK to name Professor Mcgonagall and Tom Riddle. The only problem with finding them was that we went at about 8 pm because I completely forgot that we had to do that. Luckily, and scarily, the pub we had dinner in when I remembered was literally next to the entrance to the graveyard. People say JK walked through this cemetery because it is behind the Elephant House and she saw the names and put them in the book. I don't necessarily believe it because the Riddle in the graveyard was named Elizabeth Riddell and the gravestone was no where near the main path that runs through the yard. JK would have had to really been looking; I think people try to cling on to the possibility.

 The bathroom had writing all over it.

People wrote messages to JK or quotes

from the book or thank yous. It gave me

goosebumps to see because people really

care so much about HP and you don't realize

how many people grew up with the Chosen One.

JK really changed peoples' lives.

We found ourselves a cheap hotel this time instead of a hostel. It seemed a little sketchy at first, but we ended up loving it. We stayed in the biggest hotel room I have ever been in because the building was a converted mansion. We each had our own bed, and I was able to watch Doctor Who(!) while getting ready to go out. These pictures are not of our hotel, but the building next to it. I fell in love with it because it reminded me of Batman, for some reason. 

The following day, we went to another hill, Calton, and climbed to the top. There were monuments that we decided to climb. 

I set my self timer on my camera and had to 

run all the way over to that spot, but that meant I had

to run down stairs and back up again in 10 seconds.

The first try, I obviously didn't sit down fast enough.

This one worked though!! I picked up my speed.

Love this picture

 Too cool for this place.

 Plotting my take-over

The North sea

I LOVE this backpack. It is my Mary

Poppins bag. No matter what I need to 

fit in it, it will fit even if I think it is stuffed 

to the gills. 

After we climbed that hill, we decided that it was a beautiful day and that we deserved to spend it on the beach. Sophie and I wanted to touch the North sea and we all wanted to relax a little. We hopped on the number 26 city bus and took it to Portobello beach. It is this cute shore town on the edge of a major city. It did not look like shore towns I am used to in New Jersey, the houses were all brick buildings and if you were not looking at the ocean, it looked like a city. We get ourselves some sandwiches from this cute cafe that lent us some blankets and we had another picnic, this time on the beach.

We relaxed for a couple of hours, and I realized how much I miss nature. I live in one of the best cities in the world, but London is all concrete. There are parks, but no mountains and certainly no beaches. I think this is why I really liked Edinburgh. It offered me the best of both worlds– nature and concrete.

I also really enjoyed the people. The Scottish are the most friendly people I have encountered yet. Our first morning, we walked into a Cafe Nero and ordered a tea and the man behind the counter started having an entire conversation with us and making us laugh. Then before we left, the bus driver started talking to us in the middle of the bus station and was teaching us how to say Scotland. Apparently we say Scotland with the "o" sounding like  aaahhh but it is supposed to be more of an "o" sound. He was also telling us to not drink the water in London because we will be just as bad as the English. 

Even this bagpiper stopped playing and

talked to us.

Perhaps it is just people in general who are nice. People were nice in Ireland and they are relatively nice in London. I must be so accustomed to how people in New Jersey treat each other, so when I go to another country and people are willing to help you or to walk all the way to the staff room to fill your water bottle like the bus station security guard from Ghana did, I am taken aback. People are always being pessimistic about their fellow man, but the world is not as bad as people make it out to be. I think it is what you make it. If you are willing to speak to people, they are willing to speak to you and help you out if you need it. I wish everyone could experience kindness. It is little things that people do for each other that make the difference.