A weekend in Scotland: Edinburgh

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The second full day spent in Scotland we traveled to Edinburgh to walk around the town and take in the beautiful sights. The accents heard here are quite different than the accents in London. Much thicker and harder to understand, but I'm sure if I spent time as long as I did here as I have in London so far I would be able to become accustomed to it. It's so different being in a city here versus being in London. The buildings aren't as clean looking and still have soot on them. Although, it is comforting to know that the countryside isn't as far away as it is in London. While driving there and into Scotland in general there is beautiful scenery all the way there. Instead of seeing cows everywhere there are tons of sheep. The land also isn't flat like it is in Illinois which is a nice change of pace. Upon arriving in London the sociology class went to parliament while the rest of the group either went on the royal mile or took a tour of the Edinburgh Castle. A few friends and I went on the Royal Mile which was interesting. It starts at the Castle entrance and goes to the gates of Holyrood Palace. This is basically a really long road where you can find everything imaginable in Edinburgh. The street is filled with shops of jewelry, fudge, food, pubs, souvenirs, and much more. It is just shop after shop and sometimes you'll find a museum or church thrown in among all of the shops. While walking down the Royal Mile we went into the many souvenir shops and there were tons of cashmere items along with bagpipes, woolen blankets, hats with the puff ball on top, gloves, silver, kilts and many other Scottish Traditional wear for sale in what seemed about every shop. We went to a fudge shop where I bought rocky road fudge and it was really delicious! The thing that I noticed was different than the rocky road fudge from the states is that they actually put a cherry in it as well! While walking the Royal Mile I noticed a lot of antique jewelry shops and knew that I wanted to get myself a Claddaugh ring because I wasn't going to travel to Ireland anytime soon and this was the closest I would get. There was one particular shop called Historical Connections that I found a sterling silver ring with a green stone in the middle. There were so many designs to choose from when I didn't think there would be that many. Celtic rings with birthstones were popular too. After that we just walked along the city and it was a Saturday so there were a few weddings that were taking place. Upon exiting the church there were many men dressed in Kilts and women looked very proper. Further down a man was playing the bag pipes outside of a different church and I've seen it in the states before but this many played it so easily and being outside the sound wasn't trapped in an auditorium. I had subway for lunch there and it was much different than ordering it at home. They had a 4 GBP deal where you could get a 6 in and a drink but they didn't have fountain drinks and it's always difficult to pay with a swipe card around here. It's preferred to have a chip in your credit/debit card which reduces the amount of fraud associated with identity theft. You don't have to sign any piece of paper either if you have the pin, which makes transactions quicker. It hasn't been introduced on a large scale in the U.S. yet. After lunch we took a stroll back to the beginning of the the Royal Mile and stopped into the Peoples Story Museum. It's a very small museum but a great look into the poor people's past. At the end of the museum there's a small cinema where you can watch a movie of the local people's past. It's neat because you wouldn't know how else it would have been like back then. Overall it was a wonderful Scottish experience with some great bagpipe music.

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