Edinburgh Day Two started off with a trip to Edinburgh Castle, that beautiful hunk of rock sitting on top of yet another gigantic hunk of rock that I could see from my hostel windows.

 

It’s even prettier from the front! Shout-out to the stranger man who took this shot.

 

I decided to do the free tour of the castle, and the tour guide was a young Scottish woman. At the start of the tour, she introduced herself and said, ‘If you can’t understand me now, this is how I talk all the time, so you can look at the audio guides at the ticket window.’ She had a wonderfully thick Scottish accent. I love it.

 

Here’s a view from atop the castle. Edinburgh Castle is hundreds of years old, and over the few days I was here, I heard several stories of crazy attacks on the castle, true events that became Game of Thrones inspiration, and the tale of a man who scaled the rocky side of the ‘castle rock’ to sneak in the back way (in the Scottish wind and rain, no less!) I also got to watch a British man play and talk about a bunch of medieval musical instruments. He was quite talented, and he even sang us a few songs. (He was quite the attention hog.)

 

Riding a cannon. No big deal.

 

The castle’s water tower

 

And a view from the other side!

 

After the castle, I had plans to walk around and see a bunch of other things, but I ended up accidentally wandering into the National Museum of Scotland to use the bathroom. I stayed over two hours, as is typical of my character.

This place was insane. History museum plus taxidermy zoo plus science center plus children’s dreamland all rolled into one. There were exhibits on fashion and stuffed (real, dead) animals of every shape and size. There was a leaf-cutter ant colony that I watched for about ten minutes. There were three floors of history on technology complete with interactive lessons, robot arms, the first ever cloned mammal (Dolly the sheep, stuffed and rotating slowly and eerily on a pedestal), and several intricate engines that were running so we could watch how they worked. I was in heaven, to say the least. Plus it was all free!!! And I found several bathrooms!

 

Here is a sperm wale skull from a whale that washed up on the beach somewhere near Edinburgh. The picture really doesn’t capture how gigantic it is.

 

Next, I wandered to a cafe to read, drink some hot chocolate, and eat a chicken and rice porridge dish that had half of a full chicken thrown into the bowl.

 

I didn’t really have much time to do anything else before sundown, but I did not let that stop me! I had heard of King Arthur’s Seat, a great hike with a great view, and it was my mission to complete it. The sun was making its descent as I attacked the mountain. (Well, first I really had to pee. But I didn’t want to pay to pee, and Europe is just generally bad at providing free lavatories. I wandered back and forth for about 45 minutes before giving in and buying something at Starbucks, of all places.)

 

Once that was done, the hike commenced!

 

I was tired, alone, and my feet hurt, but the view was beautiful.

 

At the top! Notice how tired my face is. I mean really, what am I doing? Is that a smile? A grimace? Am I checking my teeth for leftovers from lunch? I also think the rest of my face forgot to join in on this thing. Wow.

 

Needless to say, I slept well that night, though not nearly long enough. I woke up around five, ate some leftover soup, and hiked my way down to the train station after getting change in ‘every denomination of coin’ from one of the hostel staff (for my collection!)

 

The sunrise was gorgeous, and I rode on the second floor in the front of my double decker on the way to the airport. I’ll really miss those busses!

 

Until next time.

Venlig hilsen/ Best regards/ Cheers!

Lizzy-wa