London Town

Wednesday, July 3rd

The great thing about being in London halfway through my trip was that it felt like coming home a little bit. Like I could just relax and do what I wanted. No need to run around seeing things or trying to do everything. I started today going to Leicester Square to look for show tickets, I ended up buying a ticket for a show online. Ha!

Then I met up with my friend, Kadija. Kadija and her family lived in Greece while I was a missionary and she's one of my favorite people. She and her husband live in London now. They are both really great people. Kadija and I went to Camden Town to do some shopping. We found a REAL souvlaki place run by REAL Greek people.

 

We went back to Kadija's apartment but her husband, Melenik was working on a job application. So we decided to leave him alone and went to check out the Royal Air Force museum. We saw a lot of huge planes. And some bombs. It was pretty interesting. After that we went back to their apartment where Mel made dinner for us. Seriously, the nicest people.

 

Tea and Trains

Tuesday, July 2nd

I walked down the Royal Mile to this cute little tea shop for breakfast.

 

I was hoping that I would see the Queen. I had been seeing signs that the road was supposed to be closed all day so I had convinced myself that must be the day she was arriving. Alas, she was already in residence and I did not see her.

 

After shopping the mile, I headed to the train station. I spent the rest of the day hanging out on the train down to London. Sadly, due to some weird train thing my assigned window seat was no more. But it was an uneventful trip to London.

When I arrived at my friend Annie's place a surprise was waiting for me. :)

 

National Museum of Scotland

Monday, July 1st

Andy told us about the National Museum of Scotland on our tour so I decided I should check it out. It's a free museum so I wasn't expecting very much. I was so wrong. It's actually impressive, especially considering it's free. It's basically two buildings connected to each other. The one half has Scottish history stuff. The other half is everything else. Artifacts from other countries, a natural science portion and lots of other things.

I was mainly interested in the Scottish part of the museum. The Maiden is in the museum. There is information about how it worked and when it was used. Also there are the little coffin things that were found in a cave on Arthur's Seat which may have a connection with the killing for the medical school stories. Edinburgh is so creepy.

 

 

Also the museum has Dolly the Sheep. Because Scottish scientists are responsible for that. I learned that they think even though Dolly was "born" young she was actually the same age as the sheep she was cloned from.

 

After the museum, I wandered Princes Street and sat in the Princes Street gardens. The main part of Edinburgh is a giant hill at the top of which is the castle. The gardens are at the bottom of the hill below the castle. While I was sitting there the cannons in the castle started being shot. There were three canons and they just kept going off. I was telling my dad later, about the cannons and how the queen was supposed to be in town and he pointed out that maybe the cannons had something to do with her.

 

I ended my day by hanging out reading in Starbucks with a fantastic view of the Royal Mile. I could really be okay living in Edinburgh. Aside from I'd freeze in the winter...

 

Arthur's Seat

Sunday, June 30th

I tried to go to church today. I looked it up on the Internet and mapped it out. I figured out which bus to take and when to leave. But I couldn't find the church. Sigh.

I had decided that Sunday would be a good day to hike Arthur's Seat. They say it doesn't really have anything to do with the famous King Arthur. More likely it's a mispronunciation of Archer's Seat, because it's a big hill and would have been a good defensive place.

 

From the bottom, the hill looks like a nice gentle hill. A pleasant climb. It is very deceptive. The hill is STEEP. It is for real a hike. It's rocky and windy. The higher you get the windier it gets. I swear I was close to getting blown off at the top.

 

 

 

I was standing on top, taking some pictures when my Australian friends came up! They had been hanging out around one side of the hill for a while. They pointed me to a nice grassy area where it was less windy and I could hang out. By less windy I mean I wasn't about to get picked up like a kite. But still really windy. I sat for a little bit and took some pictures. You can see from the sea all the way up the Royal Mile to the castle. It's amazing.

Then I noticed some clouds coming. And I thought "I should start heading down so I can get inside somewhere before it starts raining." I started down the hill. But then the clouds over the city looked ally cool so I stopped and took some pictures. Then I thought "those clouds are moving fast, I better get going." But they looked so cool I took more pictures. Then it finally hit me how fast the rain was coming. But it was too late. I made it about ten yards down this really big hill before it was pouring rain. I was dripping after a few minutes. Did I mention I was wearing sandals not real shoes?

 

 

I warmed up in a Starbucks, then went in search of dinner. I was too ate for Sunday roast but I did have this yummy soup called Scottish skink. I also had fish and chips. I could get used to eating in pubs.

 

Walking Edinburgh

Saturday, June 29th

When I checked in to my hostel I picked up a flier for walking tours and found out there was a free walking tour of Edinburgh. This was how I met my future husband. I mean, I met Andy the tour guide. He just finished his law degree and he's from Edinburgh. I'm pretty sure we're a match made in heaven. Plus he's gorgeous and he has a Scottish accent.

 

Anyway, I figured a walking tour was a good idea since I've been to Edinburgh before but hadn't really seen a lot of the city. The last time I was there was during the Fringe festival, when we watched a ton of performances. Andy told us a lot about the history of Edinburgh.

 

 

This is the Mercat cross. It used to be the center of the market (Mercat) and was the place where important news, such as a new king or queen, was announced. In the past it took three days for news to reach Edinburgh from London. In the present when something happens, like a parliamentary election which would be announced at the cross they still wait three days to announce it. Andy says you'll see a guy dressed up standing on top of the cross ringing a bell and yelling out the news...even though everyone already knows.

 

He showed us the grass market where hangings used to take place. He told us about the history of body snatching. Seriously, Edinburgh has the perfect creepy history. I need to live there.

I am proud to say that I made some friends on this tour as well. Danielle (US, Texas), Nicole, (Germany), Matt and Nick (Australia). We all went to the pub after the tour. I had to go back to the hostel and do laundry. The hostel has the record for cheapest laundry on this trip. Laundry I paid for that is. After my clothes were clean, I met back up with my new friends.

 

Danielle and I decided to join Andy's Night tour, the Dark Side tour. I made sure before I decided to go on the tour that it wasn't a haunted house type thing. Basically it was just more of the history of Edinburgh with a specifically creepy twist. We visited a couple of graveyards. There are a lot of famous people buried in Edinburgh. Also there was a monument of Abe Lincoln, even though he never had anything to do with Scotland. We learned about the witch burnings, heard more about body snatching, and walked up Calton hill.

 

 

My favorite story of the evening, was about the last beheading which took place in Scotland. Actually I had two favorite stories. The first is that Microsoft apparently has some rule that all of their buildings have to have the exact same floor plan. Same size, same layout. They bought a building in Edinburgh and were going to tear it down to build their Microsoft building but most of the buildings in Edinburgh have amazing old architecture and are protected. So Microsoft was told they couldn't tear down the building. So they gutted it and built their building inside of the structure of the old building leaving the architecture. Crazy.

 

Back to the beheading story. Edinburgh had an early and more primitive version of the guillotine, called the Maiden. They used it for a while, chopping off heads and never replaced the blade. For the final execution, the blade was so dull they had to drop it seven times before the guy's head was off. Gross. Anyway, the execution to place on the Royal Mile and to this day people say they see the guy staggering down the Mile without his head. There are practically more pubs in Edinburgh than people, many of which are on the Royal Mile, and the Scots are know to get pretty drunk. Maybe it's someone else staggering down the road besides a ghost.

 

There's another story about a bridge and a little old lady but I'll spare you anymore creepy stories. I just really love Edinburgh.