Well, Scotland has continued to be a wonderful experience. We've spent the day doing all fun things, and taking in the culture and the sights as much as we can.
Last night when I left off, we headed to a Ghost Tour, which was pretty cool. Literally, actually, it was extremely cold! Our tour started at 10PM, and we walked around outside for several hours before that. By the time our tour started, I could hardly wait to get into the underground vaults to warm up - even though they are said to be one of Great Britain's most haunted places!
I thought the tour was great - it offered a lot of history and our guides were really informed and funny. I didn't see any ghosts though, and didn't really get too freaked out by anything. Still - a very fun experience and a way to be more exposed to Edinburgh.
The vaults under the city used to be home of many legitimate businesses - wine merchants, cobblers, leather merchants, etc. After awhile, they became leaky and damp - not a good place for a business - and became home to illegitimate businesses like brothels and taverns, and even a place for the poor or homeless to hang out, away from the elements. Now it's just "haunted!"
Before the tour, we did stop by "Elephant House," as planned. I ordered the Soup du Jour, which was pepper and coriander. It was one of my favorite soups EVER. Seemed to have some blended rice and celery in it as well. Wish I could replicate it at home! Though the soup was good, we were disappointed by the service...which was pretty poor.
Tried some good old British pb on my banana today...still not the same...
Europe is home to many spiral staircases. I really like the one in our hostel!
We spent the morning (after Alex got his 9834893 pastries) wandering around local shops and exploring the Royal Mile in daylight (since our ghost tour was obviously in the dark last night). We spotted this young bagpiper playing some tunes - I was excited for Alex to see a bagpiper up close! Sadly, he didn't play a "fling" or anything we used to dance to. Was still nice to hear that familiar sound!
Edinburgh is home to lots of statues of regal looking men, and lots of kilts.
And cool gothic architecture like this!
After another run (4.5 miles), we headed off to our Harry Potter tour. It was pretty cool to see all of JK Rowling's old haunts and some of the places that later popped up in her series. We went through the graveyard that not only inspired one of the more famous scenes in the series (the Harry/Voldemort duel in Goblet of Fire) but also is home to many of the names of characters in her books.
Here, for example, it Voldemort's "grave." JK Rowling got the name "Tom Riddle" from this grave, and just changed the "ell" to "le," which also helped her to formed the famous anagram - "I am Lord Voldemort."
The tour stopped several other interesting places, including the boarding school that inspired Hogwarts - where Rowling's own daughter now attends! Apparently, she picks her daughter up once a month, but the nanny has to do it the rest of the time because she attracts far too much attention to make it a frequent habit. Our guide said that Rowling is actually spotted in this area fairly often! Not today though.
After dinner we headed to the restaurant that our hostel recommends. Trying to get the "full Scottish experience," I decided to try the vegetarian haggis. I don't think it was at all the same as real haggis - because one of the most important parts of real haggis is to cook it in a sheep's liver. I thought it was good in vegetarian form though. The top layer was some sort of grain, the middle layer was mashed carrots, and the bottom layer was potato. It was actually giant, and I didn't make it through the entire thing, but I enjoyed it!
Due to the way our train tickets worked out, we actually have another full day here in Edinburgh tomorrow, and don't set off for London until 6:30PM. I'm actually really pleased about this - this means one last run in the park and another full day to explore. We're going to try to make it to Edinburgh Castle. Hopefully more on that tomorrow before we leave... and if not, should be able to do an update on Tuesday, from London!
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