The first five days of our three-week spring break, Molly and I traveled to Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Edinburgh is a unique city full of history and thought to be one of the most haunted in Europe. We first headed to the Royal Mile, a road that stretches from Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood Palace (the royal family's house in Scotland). The road is actually a Scottish mile long, 1.07 miles, which is a measurement thought to be created by the Scottish simply to annoy the English. The Royal Mile has tons of souvenir shops selling exactly the same thing and has bagpipe music playing everywhere.
The day we arrived, we took a free three-hour walking tour and learned about everything from the infamous murderers Burke and Hare to how J.K. Rowling used parts of Edinburgh while writing the Harry Potter books. During the 1700s, the medical school in Edinburgh needed cadavers so many people dug up fresh graves and sold the corpses to the school. Burke and Hare decided instead of waiting for people to die, they would just kill homeless people. They killed 17 victims before they were caught. Burke was viciously executed and his body donated to Edinburgh Medical School where it is still used for classes today. We also learned lots about J.K. Rowling. We went to the cafe where she wrote the first two Harry Potter books and the school that inspired Hogwarts. We also went to Greyfriar's cemetery where she used various names from gravestones such as Tom Riddle Jr. and Sr, Moodie, and McGonagall for character names in her books. Since Edinburgh is supposed to be one of the most haunted cities in Europe, we also took a ghost tour that night. It was more historical than frightening which I preferred, and we learned a lot about the hundreds of people who died during the witch trials here, a royal cannibal, and the ghosts that haunt Arthur's Seat.
The second day we did an extremely large amount of walking. First we climbed up part of Arthur's Seat, an inactive volcano in the middle of the city. All the tourist attractions are in one compact area so you don't realize how big the city really is until you see it from Arthur's Seat. We sat and enjoyed the amazing view for a while before we made our descent and headed to Calton Hill. This hill is much smaller but still an beautiful view. On top of it is Scotland's National Monument which is also referred to as the National Disgrace. The monument had been intended to resemble the Parthenon however, they ran out of money after only building half the columns. Refusing to accept money from a neighboring town, the monument has remained unfinished for years now. After lunch we headed to the Botanical Gardens. This was quite frustrating for the gardens were off of our main map and the brochure's map was inaccurate so it took three times longer to find it than it should have. By the time we got there, our feet felt like they were going to fall off. The gardens were lovely and we walked around a little bit before we calling it a day.
The next day was by far my favorite day in Scotland. We went on a Hairy Coo Tour, a free tour that takes you around the Highlands. At 8 in the morning we were greeted by a young man complete with kilt and a think Scottish accent and loaded a small orange bus. We first visited William Wallace's monument and learned about how completely inaccurate the movie Braveheart is. William Wallace is actually a 6 foot tall psychopath who killed his enemies quite maliciously, and the term Braveheart actually historically refers to the Scottish King Robert the Bruce. After a few other little stops, we made our way into the highlands. We stopped at a few lochs and enjoyed the serenity of them, got some amazing views of the lower highlands, and even saw a full rainbow. It was so pretty (despite the fact that the weather was being extremely bipolar). Next we pulled the bus over at a pasture to feed some hairy coos (above). The tour comes here so often the hairy coos recognize it and come racing to the fence line when they see it coming. We finished the tour with The Forth Bridge, an engineering marvel when it was built, and some Highland Toffee. The Highlands are beautiful, and I hope to someday visit northern Scotland where it looks more like the fjords.The fourth day we visited the National Museum of Scotland and Scotland's National Gallery. The museum was huge! It has 7 levels and goes from the beginning of the Earth to the recent decades of Scotland's history. We saw some interesting things though like a Viking crypt; a 7 ft tall sword the highlanders used; and a the now stuffed Dolly, the first cloned sheep. The National Gallery of Scotland was much smaller. It had a few famous artist but I didn't recognize any of the pieces.
We didn't do much our last day in Scotland. The main thing was visiting Edinburgh Castle (right). Like Calton Hill and Arthur's Seat, the castle has an amazing view. It is numerous buildings now used as miniature museums. We didn't go through them all but we saw Scotland's Crown Jewels, Prisoners of War exhibit, and a giant cannon from medieval period that I could have easily fit in to. Our other big event that day was trying haggis, a sheep's heart, liver, and lungs all ground up together. Molly and I had decided we would order haggis and another meal to split so we would have a back up if the haggis was disgusting. What we hadn't expected was that the haggis would be spicy which was not good because our backup was an enchilada which was also spicy. Our mild taste buds struggled but we both managed to finish our halves. My cheeks were literally hot to the touch the rest of the night and I don't intend on ordering either dish ever again.