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Published: January 28th 2012
Today we woke up at the unholy hour of 5am, left our warm, comfy bed in London for the 7am train to Edinburgh. The train is much more costly than a bus, so at £45 per person each way, versus £17 per person for the bus, we opted to take the train one way (to see the scenery) and the night bus home. The train today was just so easy (only 4.5 hours) so I'm sure on Monday morning we will be kicking ourselves for being so cheap (the bus takes 9 hours).
Today was a beautiful day. Once the sun came up, it was sunny all the way. It was a really nice ride through the green English countryside with the rolling hills. We went through some nice towns, but the most beautiful part of the journey was when we were approaching Scotland and the train ran alongside the North Sea on the east coast of Great Britain. We reminisced about how we swam on the other side of the sea just a few short weeks ago (see
Happy New Year!). The green rolling hills seemed to go right into the ocean, and made it feel like it was spring time.
Coupled with the sea side towns, and the sheep dotting the fields, it was a beautiful sight to see. Unfortunately we were on the wrong side of the train, so the ugly passengers on the other side were wrecking the view a bit!
The train stopped in Newcastle which looks like a beautiful city. Maybe we should add it to our list!
When we hit Edinburgh, we knew it wasn't spring. It was definitely too cold. We figure it was just above 0; but it was also really damp, so it felt cold. Yeah, we're wimps. But Elysia didn't bring her winter jacket. It's almost never needed in London. Tomorrow we'll have to layer up to be prepared. Anyways, apparently we're incredibly lucky that it was such a beautiful day (they get a lot of rain here). So far I'm not convinced that the UK is rainy; it's maybe rained on us one or two of the days since we've arrived. All the rest of the days were sunny, or at the very worst cloudy.
From the train station we walked to our hostel in the old town. We're about a 20 minute walk from Edinburgh castle,
through the beautiful university of Edinburgh. After dropping our bags off, we headed straight up the Royal Mile and out to the castle for the rest of the afternoon.
The Edinburgh Castle really is an amazing place. It's history dates back and back and back. One of the stories we found most fascinating was that the castle was sieged for two years before eventually falling into the hands of the besiegers. Before the attack, the castle was held by forces loyal to Queen Mary who was exiled in England. After sieging the castle for two years, reinforcements arrived from Queen Elizabeth in England. These reinforcements included 27 guns and 1000 soldiers. After pummelling the castle for over a week with over 3000 shots, the large tower at the front of the castle (David's Tower) collapsed and blocked the drinking supply inside. The castle surrendered and all of the soldiers inside the castle were allowed to go free - the leader was killed. David's Tower was then rebuilt into what is now the half-moon battery which houses many large guns to fight off any future similar attacks!
The Castle also played an important role in WWII. The Scottish Crown
Jewels, which live permanently in the castle, were secretly buried in the middle of the night during the war. This was done because the Scots feared invasion from Germany, and they did not want the Honours of Scotland falling into the hands of the Nazis. The jewels were buried in the remains of David's Tower, beneath the Half Moon Battery. Only four people knew where the jewels were buried. One of them was the King and another was the Governor General of Canada. The idea behind telling the GG was that if the other three were captured, the Commander-in-Chief of the Canadian Forces would be safe with the secret on the other side of the Atlantic.
After the castle, the sun was setting so we took a stroll down the Royal Mile and found ourselves a nice pub to grab a pint (cider for Elysia) and some chicken stew and bangers and mash. Later we felt like we needed to walk off our dinner, so we just set off walking as far as we could. We found this really tall hill in the centre of the city (Calton Hill) and we walked to the top in the dark. The
glimmering city was just so beautiful from up there, that we decided to practice our photography skills and tried our best to take a photo that looked like what we saw. We think we were close. After this, we walked back to the hostel, exhausted from such a long and beautiful day.
Our first impressions of the city were.... Wow! This may just be our newest favourite place in the world!
Tomorrow will be round two!
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Mom
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Im glad you're loving it there. We did too. The big picture over my couch is that castle. When you get to the highlands.....think about nova scotia... The similarity is quite amazing!