O Scotland, Scotland!

Alright, so now for the report on our first full day in Scotland.  (For those of you who have lost track like me, this was Wednesday, May 25).  Even though we started out the day at 10:00, so rather a late start, we packed tons of stuff in and saw a lot.

We started off with Edinburgh Castle.  This was done with our group, but I would've wanted to go anyway.  This was pretty neat, mostly because it was a real live castle.  Way better than all of those cathedrals.  There was a castle wall, with cannons and stuff (see below picture) and a church that is now a war memorial for the World Wars, and we went through the apartments for the Scottish king and where James I (or VI depending on your perspective, English vs. Scottish) was born.  His mother was Mary, Queen of Scots, in case you need some perspective, and he was the first king of both England and Scotland.  They still use the rooms when they need to do formal business in Scotland, but I guess the queen doesn't visit very often.  And we went down to the dungeons, which they called a prison, where they kept prisoners, including Americans from the Revolutionary War.  All in all, I was totally thrilled to be there, even if it did rain on us.  Light drizzling.  Go figure that the first time that we really get rained on is our day in Scotland and not in normal London.

Yeah, that's a cannon.

Yeah, so neat castle and everything.  Then we went down from the castle (it's up on a hill overlooking the town) and went looking for the Writer's Museum.  It took us quite a while to find it (vague directions of "it's down one of these small alleys around here" didn't help, and it wasn't clearly marked on the map) but finally thanks to a helpful lady inside one of the many scarf/lamb's wool/tartan print shops we found it.  There was stuff about/from Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and Robert Louis Stevenson.  First printings of the book, locks of hair, other personal items, notes, letters, stuff like that.  It was pretty cool, but the best part (or what made the experience worth it in my opinion) was that the museum was in this old town Edinburgh house.  It was a mansion back in the day, and they converted it into a museum.  So random back staircases, oddly built rooms, everything that makes a house neat.  There was this staircase that had steps that weren't even and the sign next to it (with watch your step in big letters) explained that when the house was built you would build staircases with uneven steps so that if you weren't familiar with the staircase you would trip and make noise.  Stops thieves you know.

What a cool building for a museum!

Yeah, so after the Writer's Museum we went down to the train station to meet Sydnie's friend who was coming in from St. Andrew's to visit.  Amy and I grabbed Subway on the way because we were starving, which was really delicious.  They were pizza subs, which I didn't even know existed, but I really rather like.  Yeah, so after the train came in we walked back over to the Elephant House and Sydnie and co. went to eat lunch there while Amy and I headed over to the National Museum of Scotland, where we ran into Emily and Lorraine.

The museum was really cool.  We kind of just wandered around for a while (we found this section full of really neat glass, including a pair of glasses that had lines from Shakespeare etched on the lenses) and met this really nice guide with a super cool Scottish accent.  He gave us directions to Dolly the Sheep, directed us to a few of his favorite exhibits, and offered his opinion on American politics and Obama.  They really like Obama over here.  But yeah, Dolly the Sheep was really cool (first cloned mammal) and we found these chess pieces that the ones used in the movie were based off of from the 1500s.  And we found a robot that spelled your name with blocks.  You type your name in and the robot spells it!

See?  There's my name!

From the museum we went down the Royal Mile (the main street) to the new Scottish Parliament.  I'm not sure how much everyone knows about this history of the UK and Scotland, so quick history lesson.  The UK was formed under the reign of Queen Anne, who was queen right before all of the Georges.  This meant that there was only one parliament, so in other words, the Scottish Parliament was dissolved.  However, in 1999 the Scottish Parliament was reformed and allowed to have jurisdiction over Scotland for whatever the Parliament in London doesn't do.  To honor the event, they built a new building for the Scottish parliament.  They held a competition to see who could design the best building that represented Scotland the Scottish people.  The result is really really cool.

Awesome building!

All of those sticks all over the sides are supposed to represent trees.  And the building's made form materials from all over Scotland, and in the debate chamber the seat backs are shaped like Scotland, and there's images of Scottish whiskey bottles in the windows.  Yeah, I loved it.  Also loved the chance to sit down.  We seriously just collapsed into chairs in the debate chamber (Parliament wasn't in session, so we could just sit there) and sat there for twenty minutes.  Then, of all of the ridiculous ideas, we decided to go on a hike.  Our initial plan was to go back to our hostel and take a nap and then go on our hike, but we realized that we'd have to go back along the whole Royal Mile if we wanted to do that.  Seemed like a waste of energy.  So Lorraine roused us and we headed off for Arthur's Seat.

Arthur's Seat is the highest point that looks out over the city and it's basically a moor.  I was really excited about hiking a moor, and it was covered with gorse and heather!  Just like in the Secret Garden!  I took tons of pictures of the gorse, a lot more than is reasonable.  Anyway, we finally made it to the top (it wasn't that bad of a hike.  Nice stone steps cut into the mountain and no mud, and lots of switchbacks) where it was insanely windy.  We got rather cold up there with the wind whipping around.

All that hair in our faces was not intentional.  The wind made it impossible to get a picture without it in our face.  

Anyway, we retreated down from the very top and sat on the grassy hillside.  I pulled out some Naan bread that I had in my bag (I've learned to always carry around water and food because you never quite know when we'll decided to have our next meal and water fountains are non-existent in Europe) and listened to Amazing Grace.  It was probably the best part of the whole day.  Satisfaction of the hike, relief to be sitting, food when you're starving, and beautiful music all in the company of good friends.  It was wonderful.

Yeah, so then we went back down the moor and walked back into town to hunt out some dinner.  The problem is that most food places (cafes and the like) all close at 5:00, so if you don't get dinner by then your choices are limited.  This seems to be fairly standard everywhere that we go.  So we ended up eating at Pizza Hut, which is way more fancy than in the U.S.  It's a total sit down restaurant with a waiter and a salad bar, and of course never-ending ice cream!  The ice cream we had to pay for, but then you could fill up as many times as you wanted.  We just kept going back to get cadbury eggs and chocolate sauce to dip them in.  So delicious!

Pizza!  

After we'd had dinner we wandered back to our hostel and I went upstairs, showered, and collapsed into bed and fell fast asleep.  Long but absolutely fabulous day.