The next couple days were more walking around and exploring the city. We found an awesome free day tour of the city – it was like 3 hours long and the only payment was to tip the guy at the end. We had a really good tour guide (an Aussie) and the whole thing was really entertaining (lasted like 3 hours), totally worth it. We went to a pub afterwards with a few people from the group and got some food, Holly and I got a really good avocado burger, Kayla got gourmet mac and cheese and Kelly got haggis. There were some awesome people in the group and it’s always cool to hear what people are doing or where they are going – good to know that there are still some solid people out there. Kayla, Kelly and I went on a ghost tour that night with the same company (unfortunately not free though) – it was fun to hear the stories but it wasn’t scary or anything. I guess it would kind of be hard to make it scary when it doesn’t start getting dark until 10 - 10:30 and the tour starts at 9:30. There is definitely quite the dark history with Edinburgh though – I wouldn’t have wanted to live here back then. Oye.
Castle!
Old town.
Edinburgh Castle on Castle Rock...original names all over the place.
We went to a free museum, which by the way looks like it has a ton of awesome stuff, to go see Dolly the sheep – the first cloned mammal. I knew they did it here but I didn’t know they kept her…kind of odd but cool. She’s stuffed and inside a rotating glass case thing. We also went back to a cemetery that our day tour guide took us too. It was the place that J. K. Rowling got a few of the names for characters in Harry Potter. She got Moody, McGonagall and Tom Riddle from different headstones/plaques. Apparently the guy she got McGonagall was some terrible poet who wrote to (nor for) Queen Victoria – she hated him. But at least now he lives on in a better light as Professor McGonagall.
The gravestone J. K. Rowling got the name for Mad-Eye Moody.
Cafe that she started writing the books in.
Saturday we went on a day tour of the highlands. Our tour guide was kind of something else, he started off ok then got progressively more annoying as the tour went on. I’m pretty sure he repeated everything he said at least 3 times, everyone was just like really…? Are we 5? I was able to tune that out relatively well but then he decided to play a plethora of bagpipe music. I STRONGLY dislike bagpipes. I appreciate them, their importance to Scotland and everyone who can play them, I’m sure it’s not an easy instrument, but I can’t stand the sound they make. It’s not quite as bad when there is a band involved…but generally (while we’ve been here) there’s no band. I was doing well with the random guys on the street playing and walking into every shop with bagpipe music playing, but that bus ride… yeah not so much. The epitome of cruel and unusual punishment came into play when he put on 1) My heart will go on (I was proved incorrect that that song could get any worse) and 2) Amazing grace – traditional bagpipe version AND bohemian remix version…what?! I needed pain killers after that one…literally.
Our first stop for the tour was to see Hamish the highlands cow. Now, I had been seeing pictures and mugs and calendars of Hamish all around the city beforehand and I was already in love with the thing…BUT what I didn’t know what that there was a whole little family. SO ADORABLE. I think I wrote of my love for brown cows earlier in the trip…it just got brought to a whole new level. I legitimately want a highland cow when I get older. We found out on the bus that we could feed them, so I immediately was rifling through my purse for change to buy the food. I’m pretty sure this was the highlight of the day for me – the highlands were beautiful…but those cows are spectacular. Hamish didn’t even get up despite our attempts to lure him over, but his wife (Heather) made up on that front. They also had a little calf, Honey. So freakin cute. Ok, I’ll stop about the cows now…just know they are awesome.
Hamish and Honey - ahhh so cute!
Most adorable face award.
NOM NOM
Next we went into the highlands, SO pretty. Unfortunately we didn’t get to stop very much and take pictures but there was one or two stops before Loch Ness. I opted out of doing the boat tour on Loch Ness to try and save some money (so I could buy food later) so I wandered around the little town we stopped in waiting for everyone to get back from the tour. We had all been looking forward to this mac and cheese Kayla had been talking about all week on the tour, but we didn’t stop in Perth on the way back so we ended up not getting it. Sadness. Also, one of the reasons we picked this tour was that it went up to Inverness – we literally just drove right though it…so that was kind of a fail. The latter half of the trip back down we didn’t stop at all, just drove back to Edinburgh. The tours in Ireland definitely have a leg up on this tour in Scotland.
Scotish highlands? Yes please.
Epic.
Loch Ness. No Nessie sightings. :(
We had one last day in Edinburgh, well Kayla, Holly and I…Kelly left to go back to Dublin today and is flying back home in a couple days. Off to Glasgow tomorrow then to Dublin on Wednesday (I think) – end of this trip is coming to a close quickly! Ahh.
One other thing – for my parents – you clearly had your bearings wrong…I should have been born in Aberdeen, SCOTLAND…not South Dakota. Big difference… 1) It’s infinitely more cooler just by being in Scotland and 2) It’s on the coast – you weren’t setting me up for success with marine biology in a land locked state. ;-)
ABERDEEN! The right one...
Fun Fact: Edinburgh used to have a ‘lake of poo’ (where all the sewage ran into) where they would test whether someone was a witch. Tying their hands and feet together, if they floated they were guilty and would be fished out and further punished, if they sank they were innocent and would go to heaven. Also, 3 tell tail signs that you were a witch were 1) red hair, 2) had a birthmark and 3) had a third nipple. I have a birthmark - again, I would not have wanted to live here.
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