Arrived Edinburgh

Hello all!

Well this morning we got up at 3.20am - ouch! So seeing as I slept horribly that brings my grand total of sleep for the past three nights to ten hours. *cries*. Oh well!

We caught the airport bus and had some sneaky 4.30am Maccas at the airport. Usually when I'm having Maccas at 4.30am it's on the way home haha. I slept the entire flight to Edinburgh and we were greeted with some beautiful summer weather...not! Rain and a top of 14 was forecast today. But as Dave said in Ireland - you either smile through it or be negative and have a crap time. So we did the former!

We left our luggage at our hostel and then did some planning for today and tmro. Then we went walking. Our first stop was St Giles cathedral. Some of the paintings on the wall were of angels playing the bagpipes! Then we went and got Brendon's train tickets from Waverley station and met the new Europe walking tour. 

Our guide was called Ben and was born in Aberdeen. He was great and we spent the next 2.5 learning and see lots, even though we were really cold! This is the coldest I've been for a while. It was 10 degrees for most of today. I hope I get to wear some summery clothes at some point!! We walked around a lots and listened to his stories and facts. Here are a few...

A man called Deacon Brodie was a cabinet maker here in Edinburgh. Who used to make amazing chests for the rich which they could store their prized possessions in and lock with a key. Due to a gambling problem he needed money and remembered he had the spare key for all their chests so began robbing all the rich people with these cabinets. The government wanted to create a task force to catch the thief and decided to hire someone respected by the public with knowledge of locks and cabinets at its head...so they made Deacon the head!! Haha. 

A lady called Maggie Dickson was sentenced to be hanged in a main square here. When she was hung the noose and pressure didn't break her neck and kill her, instead it just knocked her unconscious. She woke up inside a coffin in a cart lady that day. The driver took her back and she was about to be hung again, when the public started protesting saying that technically she had served her sentence to be hung by the neck, so she was set free and lived a long and happy life!!

One more thing I found really interesting was stopping in the Grey Kirk cemetery. Apparently JK Rowling walked through here when thinking of character names for Harry Potter. Ben said there are graves for MacGonagall, Moony and Tom Riddle (Voldemort!). Me and an Aussie girl called Jess ran off to find the Voldemort one. Turned out she was from Melbs too! We also found some rib bones in the grass. It was the site of a mass grave here and due to erosion they're constantly finding random bones amongst the grass and soil - yuck!

Halfway through our tour we had a good laugh because Ben took off his coat. We all asked what on earth he was doing and he said "what are you talking about? This is summer guys! It's not too windy, it's only raining a bit, and it's not snowing!" By this point I was shivering and jumping on the spot haha!!

The tour ended and Jess, me and Brendon headed to a cafe called 'The Elephant House'. Why? Because this is where Harry Potter was born. JK Rowling sat in this very cafe and wrote the first two HP books! Harry Potter was a very important and huge part of my childhood, so you could say I owe a lot of enjoyment during my childhood (heck - and my twenties, I still love it!) to this cafe. We queued up for ages and ordered a coffee (£3 a pop - they must love JKR for making it ok to jack up their prices!) and sat at a table in the back room just like she used to. From here we had a view of Edinburgh Castle, which is said to be her inspiration for Hogwarts as it sits atop a rock like Hogwarts does. At the moment though all the temporary seating is up for the Military Tattoo in a few weeks. Had a look to see if I could go when I'm back - for £300 I'm gonna say no thanks!

Brendon and I next walked the 45 minute walk to Arthur's seat. After the Lake District hikes the other week this was a piece of cake! But it was so windy and cold. We made it to the top and the view was brilliant. Today was very grey and tmro is meant to be too, but we were lucky that it was still a fairly bright view. We sat and enjoyed it for a while and then headed back down, bumping into Jess again on the way down!

Our last stop for the day was the Scotch Whisky Experience which Brendon really wanted to do. I personally thought it was better than the Guinness factory as there was a ride explaining how whisky is made, followed by a talk from staff and a proper tasting. Guinness was just you walked around aimlessly. We saw a collection of 3384 Scotch whiskys too!

Went to the supermarket and got our dinner and came back to our hostel. Our room is tiny and the hostel is a bit weird but really it's just a place to sleep so it doesn't matter!

Hopefully we get lots of sleep tonight and feel human again tmro!

Love to all

Claire

Xoxox