Day 5: Chilled to the bone in Edinburgh

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(Sidenote: wi-fi in Edinburgh only works in the very cold lounge area – I will post my blogs, but no photos for the time being)

Nice and calm day today – we took the 9am bus from Inverness to Edinburgh. I wanted to nap most of the way – I’ve picked up some nasty cold of some sort and want to sleep it out of my system haha. However, I only managed to sleep for about 30min or so. Oh bother. At least I got to eat a bunch of like the freshest grapes ever. Don’t know of those help my cold, but so nummy.

The ride was nice, once again. Half the drive seemed to be the same as when we came up from Glasgow – it’s fun seeing the different towns and their names; I liked “Killiecrankie” the best I think lol.

Arriving in Edinburgh it was – surprise, surprise – raining. I love rain, I really do... however after 5 straight days of nothing but dampness everywhere my body is full of sorrow. I can feel it in mah boooones. Dampness must be the national state of Scotland.

We spent the day just exploring around the Old City and the Royal Mile – first we tried to find the Botanical Gardens which brought us to three different private gardens before we gave up. Why have giant private gardens? There is no love. We basically just walked around the outsides of them, looking over the fences and being sad haha.

The area around the bus station is a construction mess – they’re building a central tram out to the airport... made us reminisce about home and how our light rail will never be done, let alone started at this rate. We also saw a bunch of people waiting to see the Queen (and a bunch of bagpipers waiting to play)... we didn’t feel patriotic enough to wait around.

We puttered around that area and found the Scottish Monument and had a look at that before continuing on to the Princes Garden which was actually open to the public... although it’s basically just a patch of green space with nothing overly pretty in it.

We ended up at the National Gallery of Scotland... and although neither one of us really feel the whole art scene, it was free so we went in for a quick look-see. They did have a section of etchings and that was quite nice, I’ll give them that. Just before 5pm we heard this loud thunder noise – apparently that is the cue to get out because they’re closing... how unique?

(Sidenote: we both desperately want a thunderstorm – if we’re going to be stuck in rain forever, at least give us a good thunderstorm to remember it by!)

We then climbed up to the Castle area – the highest point of the Royal Mile. We didn’t want to pay to go in (waaaaay overpriced) so we just looked and continued on our way down. It also looked somewhat closed/like you need an extra ticket – perhaps the Queen was going there too or there was a show or something.

Anyway, we went to see some of the churches, including the Cathedral. The Cathedral was really nice inside – we didn’t take photos because you had to pay – but it had great stain-glass windows and this fantastically huge organ. It started to pay music and I had to laugh – it sounded EXACTLY like the beginning of the Ghost and Mr. Chicken. (All the bonus points to anyone who gets that reference – except for you Mom, you don’t count.)

After that we slowly headed back to the hostel. Too damp and chilled. We can’t find a grocery store – just a corner store so that’s a bit of a pain, but I guess we’ll hunt some more for it tomorrow.

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[Dalia Taylor]

site to visit
If you have time visit the John Rennie McIntosh musueum (lovely "modern" furniture) and a fabulous tea house (tea pots and delicious deserts).