Edinburgh!

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Aaah, Edinburgh! Castles, palaces, gothic architecture, tacky tourist shops. What more could you want in a day trip?

We left Stirling via train at 9:30, after the "rush hour." It's not quite an hour long trip to Waverly station, and it goes quite fast. Our first stop was Holyrood Palace, about a twenty minute walk from the station, past the Robert Burns memorial and Scottish Parliament.

Seeing the palace was actually quite exciting for a variety of reasons, but mostly because I took a class on Queen Elizabeth I last semester at KU and ended up writing my final paper on Mary Queen of Scots and her tumultuous relationship with her second husband, Lord Darnley. Holyroodpalace was Mary's primary residence while she was queen (I believe), and the scene of the violent murder of her secretary, Lord Rizzio. The suspicion that Darnley was behind Rizzio's murder (which took place in the Queen's chambers right in front of her!) sparked the huge scandal that ultimately led to his death, Mary's abdication and eventual death.

Good stuff.

Her rooms were surprisingly small and dark, not at all what you'd expect a Queen to have. Of course, they were also under low lighting to preserve things like 16th-century bedlinens and paintings, so who knows?

As for the rest of Holyrood, it was interesting, but the best part was watching this big golden lab roll around on the lawn outside the window. The royal lawn, mind you. I wonder whose dog it was?

We did a quick walk through the Abbey attached to the palace, and then headed back up High Street. Stopped at a few tourist shops, but by then we were hungry and looking for someplace to eat, but I needed to find an ATM first. Even after that, though, neither of us wanted to be the one to say "let's eat here!" so we just kind of kept wandering around. We eventually turned down a side street, and I just happened to see, written in bright green letters on glass window, "Birthplace of Harry Potter!"

We screeched to a halt. Turns out we'd stumbled onto The Elephant House, the coffee shop where JK Rowling drafted the first two Harry Potter books! It was thrilling! It was fortuitous! It was definitely where we had to eat lunch. So we had coffee and pizza there (and talked to a professor of English Lit at Glasgow University, oddly enough), took a bunch of pictures, and set off for the Castle.

Edinburgh Castle was far bigger than Stirling, but I actually felt like I didn't get to see as much of it. The rooms were more restored, though, with more paintings and furniture on display. Actually, my favorite part was probably the War Memorial, built in 1927 to commemorate the fallen soldiers of World War I. And of course the gift shop(s).

But after the castle we didn't really have anything else we wanted to do. So we wandered up and down High Street one more time, doing some shopping (Christmas gifts! Woohoo!). Stopped in at the Writers Museum, which wasn't interesting at all (I'm not a Stevenson or Burns fan, really. Though I probably shouldn't mention that around here.) We had about three hours left to kill before our train back, so we decided to sit in a pub and absorb culture. Popped into a place called Tass, where a couple sitting promptly said I couldn't drink in there because the man was a Mizzou graduate.

Mizzou! In Edinburgh!

It was weird. But we ended up sitting and talking to them for the entire three hours. They were very nice, very friendly, and flying back to the US the next day.

Aaaaand that's about it! We managed to get on the right train to take us back to Stirling and arrived about 9:30pm with no incident. All in all, a great day! 😊

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Photos

Edinburgh
A street corner.

Old Church
I'm not sure what the name of it was, but it made a good picture...