Edinburgh

Ellyn and I had to get up at 4:30 am on Sunday to make sure we got to the airport on time. 4:30 AM!!! It was really early, but we got there in plenty of time. All of my things had to get searched at security, though. That has never happened to me, so I was kind of worried I did something wrong and would get questioned on a lot of things. Thankfully, it was just that I forget to put some liquids in a plastic bag. We had a really long walk to our terminal, which was separate from every other terminal because we were flying within the UK, and then went to the only coffee place available for breakfast and waited for our plane!

Our flight was actually really good. It was empty and very smooth. The flight back from Paris wasn't good, so I was not looking forward to this flight. But it was over before we knew it and we were in Edinburgh!

We got a taxi and went to the flat we were staying in. Ellyn's friend, Megan, studied abroad in Edinburgh a few years ago and now lives here so she is letting us stay with her! Her flat is adorable. It's small, but it's perfect. Her boyfriend, Lewis, lives here too and they are being very nice to us! That's another thing, people in Scotland seem to be much nicer than the people in London. Not everyone in London is mean or anything, but they are just extra friendly here!

Anyway, we decided we couldn't waste a day in Scotland even though we were tired, so we went to town. First, we went to The Elephant House, which is where JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book! It was really cute inside because there were elephants everywhere. We were told to check out the bathrooms, so before we left we had to at least walk in. We're so glad we did! The walls were filled with notes to JK Rowling, thanking her for writing Harry Potter. Each bathroom was a separate stall, so Ellyn and I went into separate stalls and started reading all of the notes. We wrote one each, as well! The funniest one I saw was "The Chamber of Secrets Has Been Open" because it was written in a bathroom, just like the movie!

From there, we found "Diagon Alley," or the road that inspired it! Apparently JK Rowling use to live near where Megan lives, so Ellyn and I will have to find her old house before we leave.

Then we went to the Edinburgh Castle! It was freezing the day we went but it was worth it to go! We learned a lot about the city and even got to see the crown jewels of Scotland! Since we had been up since early that morning, we decided to call it a night.

We woke up on Monday ready to climb a mountain. We had been saying for a while that we wanted to climb a mountain, and when we saw them from the plane we knew we had to! When we got up we started to get ready, Ellyn getting ready much quicker than me! When I walked out of the bathroom Megan had tea ready for Ellyn and I and even had little danish-type food for us to eat. They are so nice to us!

We got on a bus and headed towards the city, and from there we walked to the mountain. There isn't much to say about the mountain besides the fact that it is beautiful. The walk up it was kind of hard at times, and at the top it was really windy, but seeing the view was amazing. Ellyn and I spent a little less than an hour at the top. Most people only spend about 15 minutes there, but we just loved the view so much. When we eventually did make our way down, we decided to climb the mountain next to it, which is much smaller. We had found out that Dan was in Edinburgh, as well, so naturally we told him to meet us at the top of the mountain. Ellyn and I were the only ones at the top of the mountain, so when we heard someone yell something at us we knew it was Dan. We turned around and there he was walking towards us on a mountain! We talked for a bit and then had to go our separate ways because he was going to climb the big mountain, and Ellyn and I were going to get some Nando's.

While we were eating Dan called us to see if he wanted him to show us the graves that inspired JK Rowling for names in the Harry Potter series. Of course we did! So he met up with us again and showed us the grave that inspired Professor McGonagall and Tom Riddell. We found out later that there is also a grave in there with the name "Moody," thought to be the inspiration for Mad-Eye Moody.

We didn't have much else to do, so we went to a pub to have dessert. We were still tired from all the walking we did and sat in there for a while. Eventually, we decided to go to Calton Hill.

Calton Hill is a giant hill, of course, that has a bunch of different things on it, such as a building that looks like the Parthenon but is actually the National Monument of Scotland. It never got finished because they didn't have enough money to finish it. There were some other amazing views from there, and with the sun setting it looked really beautiful. We decided to walk around some more, tried to find Queen Elizabeth's palace (apparently she's in Edinburgh all the time) but eventually ended up at a Starbucks.. We were exhausted again and decided to head back to Megan's flat.

There is such a difference between London and Edinburgh that I can't decide which city I like more. London definitely has the big city feel to it, while Edinburgh has more nature to see. They are both amazing cities and cannot believe I am lucky enough to visit them.


Here are some pictures from the mountain.... I had too many to choose from so I decided to post a few here.

Ellyn and I in our school shirts!