Bag Pipes, Kilts, and Lake Monsters - Scotland

It took all of 30 minutes for me to fall in love with Edinburgh.  The gorgeous weather and fall colors probably helped, but the city has amazing architecture, lots of rolling hills, the sea in the distance, pristine parks all over the place, good food, and a rich history making it hard not to like.  I was constantly snapping pictures all day.  After 8 days of being no more than 1 foot away from each other while road tripping through Iceland, Doug and I explored Edinburgh separately and just hit all the sites in differing order.  We were staying in the Grassmarket area which seems to be a hip and foodie section of town just off the hill from the Edinburgh Castle and only a street off the Royal Mile (the main drag).  The city isn't big and can be walked in a few hours.  It is clear the people here are proud of their heritage as the Scottish flag flies everywhere and is much more abundant than the Great Britain flag.  There are several high vantage points around the city - Edinburgh Castle, Calton Hill, and Arthur's Seat are the main ones we hit.  Arthur's Seat and Calton Hill are actually sites of inactive volcanoes which erupted hundreds of millions of years ago.  The University of Edinburgh is right by the Grassmarket area and has beautiful grounds.

The Top of Calton Hill

 Arthur's Seat from the Top of Calton Hill

 Calton Hill Looking towards Edinburgh

St. Giles Cathedral

There are several Harry Potter related sites such as The Elephant House which is a cafe that author J.K. Rowling would write the books at that overlooked the Greyfriar's Kirkyard cemetery. She used gravestones here to draw inspiration for characters' names and Victoria Street was used to help her form Diagon Alley.  We did a free walking tour on our second day and learned all about the history of Scotland and Edinburgh.  There were a ton of good stories/facts about the city - I'll tell my two favorites.

Tale #1

There was a woman named Maggie Dickson back in the 1700s who became pregnant out of wedlock.  As this was highly shamed back in the day by the very religious Scottish culture, she decided to keep the pregnancy a complete secret, birthed the child in secrecy, and then killed it and disposed of it in the river.  Somehow people ended up finding out and she was charged to be hung for committing murder.  She was hung at the gallows in front of a crowd, put in a coffin, and taken to a nearby town to be buried.  On the way to the town the family heard a knocking coming from within the coffin.  They opened it up and Mary sat up!  She is the only person known to survive a hanging and lived 40 more years after the failed attempt (they had deemed her to have sufficiently served the sentence for her crime since she technically was hanged).

Tale #2

Story number two explains how the term "shitfaced" came into being.  Back in the day, the town of Edinburgh did not have plumbing.  Like, at all.  So you did your business in a bucket and there were two official times of day - 7am and 10pm - in which residents were allowed to dispose of the contents in their buckets.  This was done by literally dumping it into the street from their windows/balconies.  Since the town is on a hill, everything just flowed downhill into the river in the valley - gravity's work at its finest.  When dumping your bucket you were supposed to yell "gardyloo!" (derived from the french phrase “garde a l’eau!” meaning “watch out for the water!”), pause for a second to give anyone that may be below to shout back to hold off on the dump while they get out of the way, and then proceed with the task.  Well, Scots are known for enjoying their alcohol so often times a drunk person walking home from the bars would be too drunk to be able to comprehend to yell back or get out of the way and end up on the receiving end - hence "shit-faced".  The town's water supply also came from that same river that the waste flowed into and people often got sick from drinking water. However, they didn't get sick from drinking whiskey so they figured whiskey was better for you than water.  Perhaps why they drink so much.

 J.K. Rowling's inspiration for Tom Riddle, the character's name, came from the Greyfriar's cemetery. Character names Sirius Black and Professor McGonagall also came from tombstones here.

Victoria Street, J.K. Rowling's inspiration for the street Diagon Alley

Greyfriar's Kirkyard Cemetery

Bobby - the Scottish dog famous for sitting by his owner's grave every night for 14 years

The Meadows Park

 Edinburgh Castle in the distance

Edinburgh from the top of Arthur's Seat

 The Scottish national dish, haggis, with the "meat" on top, mashed potatoes or "tatties" on bottom, in a whiskey infused gravy sauce

Princes Street Gardens 

Edinburgh Castle

For the first time on our travels, we actually went to a museum (we're not the museum-going type)! The National Museum of Scotland is free entrance and highly recommended by many.  There's 5 floors.  I only lasted an hour (REALLY not a museum person).  There was a section on the construction of the large bridges to the north of Edinburgh so I was satisfied.  Doug managed to stay for multiple hours and closed the place down.  That night I got haggis for dinner, a Scottish dish.  I was told to eat it and then look up what it is made of.  It was actually really good!  Mine was over mashed potatoes with a whiskey based gravy sauce (I went to a place called Arcade which was recommended to us).  After a google search, Wikipedia tells me haggis is "a savory pudding containing sheep's pluck; minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock."  I'm not sure pudding is the correct word.  It was more like a very dense stuffing.  All the same, it was good and I'd probably eat it again despite the ingredients.

For anyone traveling to Edinburgh, some other notable food spots are Mary's Milk Bar for homemade ice cream or floating hot chocolate (hot chocolate with a scoop of ice cream on top) and Lovecrumbs for homemade cake.  Captain's Bar is a good spot to catch folk music while enjoying a pint.  In general, the food scene is awesome.  There are so many non-chain local eateries.

After Edinburgh it was off to Glasgow - an easy hour or so bus ride directly west across Scotland.  Really the only reason I wanted to go to Glasgow was to see the football (the real kind of football) team there - Celtic FC - play.  Five years ago when I was "studying" (more like drinking and traveling) abroad in Barcelona, my friend Ris and I were able to go to a Celtic vs. Barcelona Champions League game in there.  It ended up being one of the best days of study abroad because the Celtic fans were so much fun.  Ever since that day I have wanted to go to a Celtic game in Glasgow sooooo we did it!  The game was quite boring, 1-1 tie with the opposing team, Kilmarnock, just sitting in and playing defense the whole time, but the fans lived up to expectations.  The Celtic fan zone literally chanted and banged on the drums for every minute of the game, only breaking during halftime.  Check that one off the bucket list!

 Celtic Park stadium, aka "Paradise Park"

Celtic game! 

Now Glasgow in terms of a city, especially after having just been in Edinburgh, not so great.  It seems pretty run down and there's not a whole lot to do.  I think the highlights of the city are their very pretty parks and their bars.  Realizing this, we took a day trip up north to the Highlands.  We got great sunny weather for it, which is hard to come by in Scotland.  The scenery the entire day was beautiful.  Several movies have been filmed in this region including Harry Potter (!) and James Bond.  We visited Loch Lomond (loch means lake), Glencoe (a big valley), Loch Ness, the Urquhart Castle, Inverness, and Perth.  Sad to report we did not see Nessie the monster :( When we were just about to get off the bus at the end of the day in Glasgow, we were lucky enough to witness the typical culture of the city.  Some drunk goofball started doing a jig and push ups right in the middle of the street while our bus was stopped at the stop light.  Gotta love it.  If we had more time in Scotland, the Isle of Skye and St. Andrews are top spots to hit here as well.  Our final day in Scotland was a much needed laundry day and then we went to the movie theater, my first time in 4 years :)

 Loch Ness at sunset

Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness 

Urquhart Castle 

 Glencoe Valley