Scotland

Okay, so I had a wonderful short little trip to Scotland over the weekend. We traveled to Edinburgh by train, a very long seven hour train. But we made it there on Wednesday night, took the shuttle to our hostel, looked around the hostel a little bit, and then went to sleep. This hostel was cool because they gave each person a locker for their stuff, and you had a curtain on your bed to make your own mattress sized room. Plus they had a computer lab, and a free movie room, which we didn't use, but it was still cool that it was there.

We woke up on Thursday morning and walked up to the Royal Mile. It's basically the main street in Edinburgh, with the castle on one end, and the palace on the other. We did most of our shopping this morning with all of the shops lined up and down the mile. After wandering around for a while, we went to the Elephant House for lunch. This place is known because it's where J.K. Rowling started writing Harry Potter. She's from Edinburgh. So we ate there, and I got a coffee mug from there. We also saw the nearby statue of the Greyfriar's Bobby. After lunch, we walked up the mile to Edinburgh palace. It was pretty, but we didn't pay to go in, because we were already spending money on other things. But it's very lovely from the outside. From the castle we also got our first glimpse of Arthur's Seat, the really big hill/little bitty mountain. You'll hear more about that later.

After seeing the castle, we walked down the mile to Holyrood Palace, the Queen's residence in Scotland. We didn't go in, first because we didn't want to pay, second because it was closed. But we walked by. After that, I went back to the hostel with Holly, while the other two girls with us went on a ghost tour. We saw most of what they saw the next day. But back at the hostel we relaxed and did some homework due the next week.

On Friday morning we woke up, and went to the cemetery where some of the ghost tour was. It was there that J.K. Rowling found some of the names for her characters in the Harry Potter books. We found McGonagall, Tom Riddell (Rowling changes the spelling), and we heard that a Crookshanks was buried there, but we were never able to find it. It's a big grave yard. We also saw the school behind the graveyard that was the inspiration for Hogwarts. After exploring the graveyard, we went to go hike up Arthur's Seat.

We started hiking up, it took us around forty five minutes to get up. The view from the top is amazing, and we looked over the city and the sea. There was a storm out over the sea, but we didn't really worry about it. We took some pictures, and then we sat down to have a Good Friday devotional. We had only just started when we looked out and saw the storm moving remarkably fast towards us. The several teenage boys who were playing around decided it was time to get off. We decided likewise. The snow started coming down, but not the light fluffy snow that's nice. Since Scotland in generally is very windy, and we were at the highest point for a long long ways, right next to the sea, the wind at normal rates can knock you over. And this is storm rate winds with pelting snow.

We began our decent, clinging to the sides of the rock so that we wouldn't fall over. For a while, I was really scared we wouldn't get off. It was intense. However, it was very fitting that the storm moved in just as we were starting our Good Friday service, and "darkness came over the whole land" (from Luke's description of the crucifixion.)

But as quickly as the storm moved in, it moved out again. By the time we were down, the sun was shining again. All was well. After the excitement though, we went and had some dinner, and then went back to the hostel to sleep.

On Saturday morning we woke up very early and went to go on a Loch Ness tour. We meet in town at eight, and began our 13 hour tour. We drove in the tour bus for most of the morning, stopping for breakfast and lunch. We got commentary along the way of what we were passing. We passed by the Birnam Wood, which was quoted of in Macbeth. "Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be, until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill Shall come against him." We drove through the Highlands, which are beautiful, and saw Ross Castle. A little after lunch we finally made it to Loch Ness, and Urquhart Castle. We saw the castle, and got to see the Loch, no Nessie though.

After an hour or so at the Loch, we headed back to the bus, and on through more of beautiful Scotland. We saw a lot of film sights, such as the forests from Last of the Mohicans, the Mountains that Mel Gibson ran across as Braveheart, the site of Hagrid's hut, and the cool train bridge that is in Harry Potter when Ron and Harry steal the car. We traveled through the moors, saw the mountains, more of the highlands, and got a whole lot of history. It was amazing. The sights were great. So far, I think that Scotland might be my favorite scenic place.