Edinburgh,

We arrived in Edinburgh early on Wednesday (another sunrise down). Our hostel had a great location, right on the Royal Mile. Unfortunately, that also meant we had to walk up a giant hill with all our luggage to get there.

The view of Edinburgh Castle from the park that used to be a sewage lake. Surprisingly, flowers grow very well there. We decided to wander and explore, and ended up finding a free walking tour. It was great, because it really helped orient ourselves to Edinburgh. My favorite part of the tour, the story of Greyfriar Bobby. He was a stray that the night watchman at the graveyard adopted. After the watchman died, the dog returned to his grave every day to sit and watch over him. It was a really sweet story. The rest of the day we spent showering, eating dinner, and having a couple drinks at the pub. We called it a pretty early night after the lack of sleep on the bus.
The next day we kept it very mellow. We slept late, had a leisurely lunch, hung out in the park for awhile, and then spent our afternoon at the Edinburgh castle. It was a gorgeous day, with wonderful views. It was super clear and even after our tour of the castle we just spent hours hanging out at the top enjoying the view and sun. We also enjoyed the free sample of whiskey at the castle. It had honey in it, and made us all mistakenly believe that we loved to drink straight whiskey. I have to say, although I love Dad's whiskey sours, any other whiskey besides this brand would not be my favorite thing to drink. We spent our night at the best comedy club in Scotland. It was a night with five different comedians, four of which were really funny. The first however, was painful to watch.


Look at that gorgeous clear sky! Not what you really expect in Scotland.

We started our Friday with a visit long breakfast. Then we split up until the afternoon. Kelly and Emily headed down to the extremely foggy beach and I went to the National Gallery of Scotland. I had an interview for my university collections internship (which I ended up getting). I feel like I might have gotten purely out of novelty, because the hostel's internet was out that day, so I had a half hour to rush to Starbucks and only got on skype 3 minutes before it started. I doubt they had any other interviewees that had to conference in from a Starbucks from Edinburgh. After meeting up again, we went to Elephant House Cafe.

The Elephant House is another part of our Harry Potter tour. This is the cafe where J.K. Rowling would sit and handwrote the first Harry Potter. The Edinburgh Castle was inspiration for Hogwarts. That night we went on a pub crawl. It seems like we saw all the other Americans visiting Edinburgh at the time! Craziest coincidence of the trip, Kelly met a guy who is from her hometown near Atlanta. They even had a lot of the same mutual friends.

Saturday was our last full day, so we decided to head to the National Museum of Scotland. It was our first day of bad weather, so it was nice to spend time inside. It was a cool museum, with lots of entertaining exhibits and was still in the process of a huge remodel. It even had Dolly the sheep!
After the museum, we decided to test out the specialty of Scotland, haggis. Rating of taste= not bad, rating of texture= horrible.
Looks=also horrible

Our last night in Edinburgh was spent at a couple pubs, and we called it an early night. Emily and Kelly both had very early flights. My flight was a little later, so I hung out in a cafe and read my book for a little while. Unfortunately, I could have hung out in the cafe for even longer, because my flight ended up being delayed over four and a half hours. Of course, I didn't find out about the delay until right after I spent my very last pound. Going along with the bad travel time, the metro was also broken when I finally made it back to Copenhagen, therefore delaying me another hour. The next few days were spent lounging and lazing while waiting for the next segment, Holly's visit and Stockholm!