Edinburgh was absolutely unreal. We stayed with our friend chloé's friend David, who was a perfect host. He took us to the royal Mile after we'd dropped off our packs. We wandered into a nearby pub where we had a damn good dinner. I tried the local whisky & learned about adding a drop of water to the drink to infuse it somehow? Not sure, but it tasted good all the same. We also tried haggis, which is a local delicacy (eh, delicacy? Def local to the region) Haggis is in the same vein as scrapple and livermush, which lands it in my "you should try everything once" list. It wasn't bad, just not something I'd really pine for.
Veronica and I got up the next morning to catch the bus & whoops whoops whoops we were not paying attention and essentially ended up in a field on the way to midlothian (hint: not down town Edinburgh like we had planned) fortunately the same bus driver picked us up & made no mention of our mishap. So we wandered into town and explored the Royal garden (STUNNING) before we traipsed over to the underground ghost tour. Veronica is more into ghostly occurrences than I am, but I would honestly recommend the tours for history & perspective. There was an underground tunnel system intended to be a shopping center for the rich, but whoops it leaked, so instead, it became a sleep space for folks unwanted by society, while a bridge was built on top for a path between the university & the top of the city, allowing your rich kids and doctors to skip over the market place and the poor folks literally and socially beneath them.
We wandered around a bit more and explore the city before popping into a coffee shop to configure an international phone. NIGHTMARE. I was so frustrated. We sorted out some more details for our trip & then met David & his fiancé Lorna for dinner at an Indian restaurant & holy wow it was so good! They took us to see Greyfriars cemetery, where JK Rowling came up with some of her character names for Harry Potter. There is an actual Tom Riddle. And an actual McGonagal. It was lovely. David & Lorna headed home while we explored a bit more. It was so nice to walk around a city holding hands and to receive no looks. It was nice!
We got up the next morning and went to hike Arthur's seat and climbed to the top. So as a funny moment, I would like the world to know that I had suggested climbing to the top with a bottle of wine & a small picnic after dinner bc I was told the hike wasn't too bad. L O L. the hike up was indeed a HIKE. Many stops and many sips of water later, we made it and it was absolutely worth it. I mean look at that view! You could see the whole city and holy wow, it was sacred.
Eventually we climbed down and traipsed towards some food, finishing our tour by walking up to the castle but not inside bc lolz, I'm not paying 20£/per for an hour of self guided castle wandering. Nay. We went back to David's, left some coffee & a thank you, and made our way to the bus station for Glasgow!
No comments:
Post a Comment