We met World Traveler Extraordinaire Laura in Piccadilly Circus, where we enjoyed the Christmas decorations. London is so much prettier at night. We may also have wandered, as a complete coincidence, to Leicester Square, where the world premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I may have been taking place. Entirely accidental, of course.
By the time we got there everyone was inside watching the film and all of the red carpets were rolled up, but I can still say that I was there!The Harry Potter Adventure (as it should really be called) quickly moved into its next phase when we caught our overnight bus to Edinburgh. Being an inexperienced (but practising!) traveler as I am, I found the whole thing fascinating. Ninety-seven percent of the passengers were other student travelers, so it was a really cool atmosphere. There were several groups of people who were on weekend trips, but some had been traveling for weeks and weeks. I tried to stay awake to see the sun rise over Scotland, but I got my best sleep between 6 and 7 a.m., so I missed that one.
Our first view of Edinburgh was astonishingly beautiful - the Georgian buildings of the New Town, the Gothic spires of the Sir Walter Scott Memorial, and up on the hill, the Old Town and Edinburgh Castle. We quickly rubbed the sleep from our eyes, dropped our luggage at our hostel, and set off to find breakfast. And Harry Potter. Thankfully, Edinburgh anticipated that two Harry Potter-obsessed American girls would someday come to the city needing breakfast, so they made both of these things available in one place: The Elephant House.
This is a delightful restaurant with a warm and cozy atmosphere, mismatched chairs, and an amazing view of Edinburgh Castle. It also happens to be where J.K. Rowling wrote the first two Harry Potter books. Yes, pilgrimmage, whoa. To pay proper hommage to The Boy Who Lived (and to A Very Potter Musical), we decided to try our hand at writing a literary masterpiece on a napkin. 
Needless to say, I don't think that I'll be making more money than the Queen anytime soon. What I really liked about the Elephant House, after the amazing hot chocolate, was, and this may surprise all of you, that it wasn't completely devoted to Harry Potter. Apart from a sign in the bottom of the window and this awesome toilet 
(very British, bragging in the bathroom - it makes them seem humble and like they're laughing at themselves because their merits are displayed in the loo, but that's the room that people use the most, so it's sort of a back-handed way of showing off. Thank you, Kate Fox), there was almost no mention of Rowling at all. If that restaurant was in America, every ounce of Harry Pottery goodness would have been exploited, and the menu would have included pumpkin pasties and rockcakes instead of eggs and haggis. And there would have been a gift shop. It's cool, because you have to know where to look here. It's like when you discover a really cool band before they go mainstream, and you feel warm and fuzzy because you know something that other people don't. So, good job Scotland.After our lovely breakfast, we took a free tour of Edinburgh with this amazing tour company called Sandeman's Tours. They run tours in several European cities, and they're awesome - our guide was a great storyteller, we saw a lot, and I learned so many fun facts! Highlights include:
-All things Harry Potter-related (obviously). Jesse and I had to work really hard to not seem overenthusiastic and embarrass Laura.
-Greyfriar's Bobby, the little dog who sat by his master's grave for fourteen years and inspired a Disney movie (what doesn't inspire a Disney movie? Honestly). People leave tokens by his grave, usually in the form of sticks or used bus tickets, tokens of extreme devotion in other countries, apparently. Our guide's favourite-ever offering was an envelope full of (unused) German bus tickets that said, "Bobby - come to Oktoberfest!"
-Robert the Bruce's capture of Edinburgh Castle: after William the Wallace ran around yelling "Freedom!!!" painting himself blue, and getting himself killed, Robert the Bruce decided that he needed to find the biggest, toughest, most Scottish of men with the best kilts in order to take Edinburgh Castle back from the English, so he sent his scouts into the Highlands. A year later, some thirty buff Highlanders came back, and I imagine that Robert the Bruce said something like, "Really? That's all that you've got?" Maybe they broke into "I'll Make a Man out of You" from Mulan after that, I'm not sure. But it turns out that one of these bad-ass Highlanders used to work in the castle and so knew the secret ins and outs, and it was decided that he would sneak in and then open the doors for the rest of Robert's men. Very Robin Hood, really. As our guide described it, "Ninja Scot climbed up the cliff and snuck into the castle, taking the English by surprise!" Win, Ninja Scot.
-The Stone of Destiny, which is the stone of all that is Scottish and therefore not English. Legend says that wherever the Stone is, there Scotland will rule. Unfortunately this is a blatant lie, because the English stole the Stone when they took over Scotland, and it resided in the coronation chair at Westminster Abbey for hundreds of years. The English finally returned the Stone in the 1990s, and it was marched up to Edinburgh Castle accompanied by bagpipers. And what patriotic Scottish song did the bagpipers play? The Mission Impossible theme. I love Scotland.
Our tour ended at a pub where we gathered up all of our courage and tried haggis, the national dish of Scotland. For anyone unfamiliar with haggis, don't look up what's in it before you eat it! I actually liked it - much better than meatloaf.
Because the United Kingdom is ridiculous, it was getting dark by the time that we left the pub (around 3. Let's discuss - not cool), so we made a quick trip up the cliff (not quite like Ninja Scot) to get a closer look at the castle. There was an absolutely amazing view of Edinburgh, which makes the top three in my beautiful cities list. 
Upon returning to our hostel, we realized that a big group of Dickinsonians had followed us to Edinburgh and were actually staying in the same hostel - small world. We all went on a ghost tour following dinner at a restaurant called Chocolate Soup, which was basically a dream come true. Creative names aren't really a forte over here, so there actually was chocolate soup on the menu. It was delicious. But the ghost tour: I was terrified, not going to lie. I almost had to resort to singing "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog" like I did when I was little and couldn't sleep for fear that the sun was going to become a red giant overnight and swallow the Earth while I slept. True story. Our guide was supposedly a medium but was a great storyteller regardless, and he took us into the vaults underneath the city. This is where all of Edinburgh's truly poor lived, and it has seen an enormous share of unhappiness, whether you believe there are still spirits there or not. Our guide promised us that people who were emotionally open weren't usually affected, so my mantra quickly became, "I'm emotionally open, I promise, please don't hurt me!" Fun fact: Edinburgh is supposedly the most haunted city in Europe.
I was doing fine until our guide took us to a room where there was apparently a Level 4 Haunting: demonic activity. This is of course where someone got sick, so he just up and left all of us in the demonic activity room to bring her back to the street. Excuse me, have you seen Paranormal Activity (I spent most of it hiding underneath a blanket, not going to lie)? I was not happy! I was momentarily relieved when we left this room, but then he took us to another room with a Level 5 Haunting. It just got better and better! The bridge of my nose met Laura's shoulder very forcefully when I tried to use her as a human shield after someone jumped out of the passageway and shouted "Boo!" but we got a free shot at the bar above afterward, and I was slightly mollified. So nothing happened to me personally, which I was happy about, but there was the woman who got sick, and another woman suddenly started crying for no reason whatsoever. It was really interesting to see, and I'm glad that we went. I was also glad to get back onto the street!
Day two in Edinburgh dawned bright and early with my cell phone trying to ruin my life. Just a note: never set your alarm on "vibrate" and then leave it on a metal locker, especially when that locker has a hole in it. I tried to cushion the phone on my hat, but of course it vibrated off of the hat and fell through the hole into the locked locker. Awesome. So my phone was making the entire row of lockers shake, waking everyone in our 14-person room up in the process. Guess who was not the most popular person in Edinburgh at that moment? In an incredible state of half-asleep strength, I managed to wrench the top off the locker and dove headfirst into it to retrieve my phone, alternating between curses and apologies the entire time. Thankfully, people found it amusing and no one tried to kill me.
After this invigorating wake-up, Buddy Jesse, Laura, and I walked to Holyrood Park, where we climbed King Arthur's seat, a volcano overlooking Edinburgh. It looks exactly like the scene in The Fellowship of the Ring when the Fellowship is just setting out and they come over the hill one by one as the music swells into the main theme in a dramatic crescendo.
It was so beautiful, but excessively windy! Laura was a champion and climbed in ballet flats, and one actually started to blow away! I was super helpful in retrieving it, as I was laughing so hard that I was incapacitated. We walked down the other side, around Salisbury Craigs. Unfortunately, our plan to fall and twist our ankles, thus attracting three beautiful Scottish men (who would also be the sensitive musician types) to rescue us, did not pan out as it does in movies. Maybe we'll give it another go in Ireland this weekend. 
We spent the afternoon in somewhat educational pursuits at the National Museum of Scotland, or, the Museum with the Most Confusing Layout Ever. I saw some really cool Pictish carvings, but I was so frustrated by the layout that I just wound up wandering around until the museum closed. We made dinner at the hostel and talked to some of the other travelers and employees. As this was the first hostel that I had stayed at with other people in it, I was fascinated by the hostel culture. The people who worked there didn't really plan to be in Edinburgh - they just liked it and so started working at the hostel for free room and board. In a few months, they'll move on. It's so...vagrant. I don't know if I could ever live that life, not knowing where I was off to next, or how long I would stay, but it was really interesting. Except for the part where the Canadian made fun of me for being American. What?
The three of us set off for a night on the town, which was still in a rugby frenzy. Scotland had played New Zealand earlier in the day, and so the pubs were packed with people in kilts and warpaint. It was amazing. At the first pub that we went to, we started talking to three Irish boys who were drinking vodka out of children's sandcastle buckets. I couldn't understand most of what they said, except that they thought Buddy Jesse was President Obama's daughter and they were clearly talking to me and Jesse to get to Laura. Sad. So we moved on in search of a club with five stories of amazing adventures to discover, and five stories of weird guys who can't dance, and whom Jesse headbutted when they wouldn't leave.
On the third day I let Jesse's alarm go off instead of mine, and we had a quiet breakfast at the hostel before setting off in the rain to find another, less expensive castle. We got sick of waiting for the bus, however, and indulged in some very touristy shopping in the New Town instead. After lunch we visited St. Giles Cathedral in order to see one of three carvings in the world of an angel playing bagpipes.
It was very epic, and very Scottish. So much character in Edinburgh. (Image courtesy of http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3644/3446098858_ce4716f27d.jpg?v=0)Following this great discovery, Laura set off to be scholarly and tour Holyrood Palace (the Queen's residence in Scotland), while Buddy Jesse and I attempted to visit the Writer's Museum to see exhibits on Sir Walter Scott (I'm reading his Rob Roy now, albeit very slowly), Robert Burns, and Robert Louis Stevenson. It was closed of course, so we headed back to Greyfriar's Kirkyard, where we happened across, after twenty minutes of searching, the grave of one Tom Riddell and his son, Tom Riddell. That's right: Voldemort is buried in Edinburgh.
Realizing that we didn't need to temper our Harry Potter obsession for Laura, we may have gone back to the Elephant House, as well, where we made up lives for all of the other patrons over our hot chocolate.We met Laura and confessed our actions after being stopped by a street performer who shouted, "Oi, tall woman! Stand wherever you want, you'll see everything. You, short friend, down in front - stadium seating!" We had to stay after such a greeting! The rest of the evening was spent whiling away our time in various pubs and coffee shops until we had to catch our overnight bus back to London, and then take a bleary trainride to Norwich. We were the three best travel buddies that anyone could have, but by that time we were also a little bit cranky and just wanted to go to bed. So we actually snuck, Ninja Scot-like, back into our flats.
The adventures didn't stop after my much-needed nap, however, as the Goo Goo Dolls played at UEA that night! So much excitement in one weekend! They put on a great show and we had a really good time.
It was an amazing adventure, and I really loved Scotland. Since this post is so long, I think that I'll save my thoughts on Harry Potter for another time, because I know that you're all dying to hear them. But in the meantime, have a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving! I'll be thinking of you all on Thursday.
No comments:
Post a Comment