Epic Grad Trip: Edinburgh

We'd heard from many, many people that Edinburgh was their favorite part of Great Britain, and how gorgeous it was, and how awesome it was. And it was both gorgeous and awesome, but I found that I did not love it as much as I loved London and Wales. Probably more than I loved Bath, though. We'd caught an afternoon train, but it was summer, so we still had plenty of daylight to hike up to Arthur's Seat and enjoy the views in the late afternoon sunshine.

We were up and at 'em early the next day to get to Edinburgh Castle (almost) as soon as it opened, which was probably a good choice because there were already lots of people there. What stuck mle as we were touring was how different the various castles we'd visited so far were from each other. Edinburgh didn't have the same sense of "defense" that the others we'd visited had, mostly because many of its defenses were natural, and many of the layers were not as noticeable nowadays.

We took the free tour which was mostly an overview of what the highlights of the castle were, and then arrived in time for this guy to teach us about Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Jacobites, and the many uses of a kilt.

This was the beginning of the WAY too much we heard about the Jacobites while we were in Scotland. I asked a Scotsman later about whether the Jacobite story was part of the Scottish national identity and he said no way, they only talk about it for the tourists who come to Scotland because they loved Braveheart. Lame. I also started to find the constant bagpipe music and the kilts a little cloying because it started to feel inauthentic. Not to say that I don't think that there are people who play the bagpipe because they love it or wear kilts because they're upholding a long tradition, but what we saw of that felt gimmicky, which is probably why I didn't love Edinburgh as much as I felt like I was supposed to.

Don't get me wrong, though, Edinburgh is a gorgeous, gorgeous city. And we WERE in the tourist areas, so you have to expect SOME of that. Also, I'm going to put a plug in now for walking tours. We loved every single walking tour that we went on, including the "secrets of old town" tour we took after leaving the castle and grabbing lunch.

Lori had gotten some acrylic nails as a graduation gift, and proceeded to complain about them pretty much the entire trip. I'm not even kidding. One popped off and another had broken so when we spotted a nail place, I decided that everyone would be happier if we stopped and got them taken off.

This turned out to be a longer process than we anticipated, but the lady -- who was from North Carolina and had the accent to prove it -- was delightful and we whiled away the time chatting about living in Scotland. At one point she stopped and announced "I love a man in a kilt" and watched said man in a kilt swish by. Then she told about how she had caught her husband "twirling" while dressing in a kilt for some formal occasion. Love! (And those Scottish men did tend to swish when they walked by in kilts.)

We eventually made it to the end of the Royal Mile, stopping to admire the Holyrood House from afar, since we'd gotten there too late to actually go in

The we wandered back home, stopping to have some dinner and a fried Mars bar on the way. Um, yeah, deep fried, battered Mars bar. Disgustingly delicious. We should probably stop here and talk about how much chocolate Lori and I ate while in the UK. We had multiple chocolate treats a day. My personal favorite were the Minstrels, which are basically giant M&Ms but with good milk chocolate inside. We had those probably every single day. And then we tried all kinds of candy bars, and let me tell you: the Brits put weird stuff in their chocolate. The strangest we had was chocolate with pop rocks AND jelly beans in it. So. Weird.

The next day we took a bus tour out to Loch Lomond and the highlands. This was a last minute addition to our trip, but by then we'd learned that Lori traveled much better with structured touring rather than wander (and particularly walking wandering), so we figured it would be a good idea. Loch Lomond did not disappoint.

Our driver was weirdly obsessive about making sure that groups with odd numbers of people sat together, and he was an odd mix of funny/whiny. Definitely not as good as the Mad Max tour in Bath, but we still loved seeing the gorgeous country side. We stopped in this one little town for lunch that had a "rare sheep" zoo-type thing. Which included this four horned guy.

Weird. The highlands were gorgeous to travel through, and the tour included a stop at Stirling Castle, which had not been on our agenda.

Stirling is a "restored" castle, and sparked a lengthy discussion between Lori and I about the merits of restoration v. preservation. We both ended up being on the preservation side of things because we felt like it made the sites more authentic. We felt like you couldn't ever really re-create things as they really were, though I must admit, I was impressed by these re-created tapestries.

We spent that evening in New Town (in which, ironically, most of the building are older than those in Old Town) and appreciated the Georgian architecture, some yummy food, and the stunning views of Edinburgh Castle.

We spent our last morning in Edinburgh at the Edinburgh museum, which we didn't have nearly enough time to play in, though we enjoyed seeing Dolly the Sheep.

We stopped to get some Lebanese food for the train ride up to Inverness and scored some free hummus because the guy was open, but not actually ready to serve food. Delish! And then we went to the train station and sadly waved goodbye to Edinburgh.