City Post: Edinburgh

We were bummed that we were going to miss Edinburgh on The Great Gallivanting, but then we started looking at train costs to go direct from Newcastle to London. It turned out that it was cheaper to take the train to Edinburgh, stay for a couple of days, and then train down to London than it was to just take the train straight to London (which didn't make much sense to us, seeing a the train from Edinburgh stopped in Newcastle, but that's government for you). We were going to miss Annie, but such is the nature of having travel friends.

We got into Edinburgh pretty early (around 10h30), so we had almost the full day to take in the sights. We dropped our bags at the hostel (which was right in the middle of the historic city center), and then headed out to do a walking tour of Edinburgh's Royal Mile.

The Royal Mile is the colloquial name for the main road which leads from Edinburgh Castle at the top ("on the rock" as the locals say) down to the Scottish Parliament at the bottom. It passes by the Scottish Supreme Court, where John Knox is buried (he was an influential religious figure in Scotland in the 1500s) under parking space number 23, Saint Giles' Cathedral, the Edinburgh Museum, and many other must-see spots in Edinburgh. You'll also pass by Deacon Brodies, a pub named after a politician who spent his nights breaking into houses allegedly to fund his gambling habit. The pub's sign has two different faces on it depicting his two different lives. Brodie was hanged for his crimes and buried in an unmarked grave, but legend has it that he was spotted in Paris after his supposed death. Jutting out to either side are a series of alleys, gates, and closes which give you a behind-the-scenes look at the heart of the city. The Writer's Museum is located down Lady Stair's Close. It is a free museum dedicated to Scottish writers and poets.

That night, we went with the hostel to do some traditional Scottish dancing. At least that was the plan. The bGar that was hosting the dancing was packed full of people, so us newbies had some trouble getting started. Watching the experienced dancers was awesome, though. As usual, Jack turned in early, but Jo stayed out with the hostel crowd. We only had two nights in Edinburgh, afterall.

The next day, we decided to do a Harry Potter tour. Much of the books were written in Edinburgh, and J.K. Rowling has openly stated how much of an impact the city had on her stories. We started off at Greyfriar's Kirkyard, which is a graveyard outside of an old church and school. J.K. Rowling used to wander around this graveyard when taking a break from writing, and she took many names for her characters from the tombstones she saw. She even incorporated some of the life stories into the characters. From there, we moved about the city to see some of the places J.K. Rowling would write her books. None of the cafes she worked in are open now; one has changed hands several times, and another caught fire not too long before our visit. The Balmoral Hotel, however, remains. This is where she finished the Deathly Hallows in 2007. In her excitement, she wrote "J.K Rowling finished writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this room" on a marble bust in her room. For several hundred dollars a night, you can stay in that same room. The tour finished off on Victoia Street, which is rumored to have been the inspiration for Diagon Alley. There's licensed Harry Potter shop and museum on the street that is free to walk through that we explored. It has everything Harry Potter you could think of, from books to notepads to mugs to you name it. The Harry Potter tour was a bit of a touristy thing to do, but it was an experience to get a different take on a city than the standard history tours we'd been doing.

After the tour, we went to look at cameras for Jo. She'd been talking about getting into photography, and it's not like we had much better planned, so we walked to a camera store to look at some different models. There was a very nice man who owned it who really helped her out. He showed her some basic cameras, different lenses, and she ultimately ended up buying a used one from him. We'd already picked out where we were going to dinner (about a 30 minute walk away), so she got to play with it on the way to the Cafe Andaluz Old Town (there were more than a few pictures of dogs on the SD card by the time we got back to the hostel).

After our tapas dinner (you know, because we missed Spain), we went on a pub crawl with the hostel. It started at 19h30, which is crazy early for a hostel pub crawl. The first bar we hit was a salsa bar that didn't play salsa music (we know, didn't make sense to us either). The second one had a ball pit for adults. Leave it to young adults to relive their childhood trips to McDonalds at a bar! It was a lot of fun, we have to admit, and the mirrored room made for some great pictures.

Our train to London the next morning left at 6h23 (not to put too fine a point on it), so we had a super early morning. Luckily there were breakfast places open at the train station, and we got to have entire rows to ourselves on the train. Four hours later, we would be in London!

Where We Stayed: High Street Hostel

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