Edinburgh, wow, this was honestly one of the best days of my life being there. I know I said I would write the blog on Sunday, but life got in the way, as happens sometimes, so here is my 26 hours in Edinburgh:
So after getting to Edinburgh, the public transportation took me right to my hostel's door, so it was a breeze to get in. After putting my stuff in a locker, I decided to try to look up a haunted tour, as recommended by Rick Steves, but unfortunately it was too late and I had just missed them, but the castle was right across the street, and since I needed to get food anyways, I gave myself my own haunted tour. So Edinburgh, I learned, is considered the most haunted place in Europe. It was the largest Medieval city, and actually had the first skyscraper in the world. The old part of the city is still very much that, old. The buildings all date back to as late as the 1600s, and because it was built on kind of this cliff-thing, there are all of these creepy alley ways and narrow passageways called "closes." Black death also hit this city very hard, and the peasants were kept underground so as not to contaminate the noblemen, therefore the haunt people still in these closes.
So the next day I woke up to a completely non-cooperative camera. So I used my cell phone instead:
So you can see some of the buildings of the old town in the right of this picture, and then the valley-ish thing used to be a Loch, but it was so polluted with trash and human waste and carcasses during the middle ages that they drained it. So after I took this picture, I went to a 3 hour tour of the city. This was one of the coolest things about Edinburgh, they really want to make the city available to all people of any budget, therefore all of the museums were free. And my tour was also free! Talk about a good value! My tour guide was really entertaining too, as you can see from the video
Here is the Edinburgh Castle from one of the sides. It is clear why someone would want to build a castle there back in the olden times, it is literally unattainable except for one side because there is literally cliffs on 3 of the 4 sides. When I went inside the castle, it was pretty cool to see the Scottish Crown jewels, most importantly being the stone of Destiny. It has a pretty interesting history, especially in recent years, so I encourage people to look up the story if you dont know it. Queen Mary also lived there, as well as King Edward VI, who was born there. I found the Scottish history to be quite history, and I found it interesting how oppressed both the Irish and the Scottish were throughout history, something that I had never really thought about before.
So admittedly a big reason why Edinburgh was so attractive to me was that it is where Joanne Rowling, aka the author of the Harry Potter series, lives. Although I knew that she had written all of the novels in this city, it really was astonishing to see bits of the Harry Potter world in real life. My first taste was when I went to get a coffee and a small coffee shop across the way from where her flat had bin circa Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets, there was an item on the menu that was a name of one of the sweets in the books. I thought to myself, "thats really cool that they made something on the menu Harry Potter-ish".... but then it hit me, Rowling had probably been here several times, and maybe it was her that borrowed this word, not the coffee shop. Also right underneath her former flat was where they used to do the public executions (pleasant I know), and my tour guide told us a story of Maggie Dickson (look up the story if you are interested in a shocking tale), and basically she had been sentenced to hang to death, and after being pronounced dead and sent to the cemetery, the wagon driver heard a knocking on her coffin. After opening the coffin, he discovered her to be alive. The way my tour guide told us the story of old Maggie, also known as"Half-Hangit Maggie Dickson” it really reminded me of the Gryffindor ghost "Nearly Headless Nick." It is also said that Rowling took strolls in the cemetery seen in the video above, and there is a Hermione, a Mr. Granger, and a McGonagall.... but as seen above, I am standing next to the most important one, yes Tom Riddle =) (aka Voldemort)
Above is me in the Elephant Cafe, aka the cafe where Rowling wrote the first two Harry Potter books. She had a deal with the cafe that she would be able to stay there all day, only buying one cup of coffee. It was cheaper to do this than to heat her apartment.
The Castle from down below!
Edinburgh from the Castle!
Scotland in all its glory!
So I just had to see Dolly the clone sheep! who can say they saw that?
