Last thursday Hannah and I departed with a group of SU students headed to Edinburgh, Scotland about a four and half hour train ride from London. Sorry for the boring first sentence…thats just how it is. Anyway, so who knew that they had internet on trains? Not me. Pleasantly surprised. Also a new favorite form of transportation. I had some editing to do and Hannah and I watched Roman Holiday so it went by pretty quickly. We met our professor for the trip Forbes Morlock. Real name. Anyway, when I met him…he was drinking Stella. We were on our way to being friends.
We arrived in Edinburgh around 11pm and though thoughts of going out seemed like a good idea on the train…once we hit the hotel…exhaustion hit us. So..like the awesome partier we are…we went to bed. Par-tay!
Friday had a 9am start where we headed to check out the heritage center. This is boring except for the fact that the room we were in looked like a miniature version of the library from beauty and the beast. Awesome? yes. I want one. Please observe.
My future Library
Then, we went to check out the Queens resident castle-y thingy (technical terms only people) through the bars like the commoners we were. Then we headed out to see the Scottish Parliament. Now, the thing about the scots is they are very live off the land and the land is our power. I’m not commenting on this. I’m simply going to show you a picture of their 400 million dollar parliament (budget 40 million) from above. It is supposed to look like a tree that grows out of the land. Once again…not judging simply noting. The base is the concrete part covered in grass towards the right hand bottom side. Not the white thing…thats a geology museum.
Tree Parliament
We headed inside to take a look at the actual chamber where Britain allows Scotland to sorta kinda rule themselves except when it comes to anything important. Its a pretty cool building except for the fact that it feels a little like a bunker at some points and an IKEA store at others. Lots of lights and light colored wood but then cement tunnels. Interesting.
Anyway, this is when my professor was talking about the importance of the architecture of the building. It was built to be transparent to the outside. Lots of windows etc. This is when he was telling us about a conference/dinner he went to when a professor from Newhouse was talking about how cool Newhouse III was because it was built mostly out of glass and it represents free speech and all that jazz. He remarked how original this idea was. To which Forbes replied, “For fucks sake, they’ve been doing that for 10 years.” Thats right…my professor said For fucks sake…in the middle of parliament. New fav professor? Yes, I think so.
Moving on.
We started walking up the Royal Mile, which is a mile (go figure) of road in between the Queens residence and Edinburgh Castle making a few stops along the way at grave yards to pick out graves for people like Humes, Robby Burns and economist Tom Smith. This is where we learned about fun things like buying pigs and putting then in the street to eat all the …poo…and stuff…that got thrown onto the street. Here piggy piggy piggy. Treats?
Edinburgh is a really interesting city because it was basically built in two parts: New Town and Old Town. Old town was built around Edinburgh Castle for geographical defense. It’s basically on a giant mountain and the town was just built up around that in a haphazard slapdash sort of way. After they decided that there wasn’t a huge danger of being attacked anymore (also the city stunk and was gross) the rich people moved out to New Town…basically a giant suburb organized into nice squares and georgian mansions. Rich people give the finger to the poor as they hustle away to their mansions. Theres something new and different. Fun story. The two towns are separated at one point by a pub:
The Worlds End.
Thats right. It was right next to the wall that once circled old town and was literally for the people that lived there. The worlds end. We went to this pub later on friday and as one kid commented. Wow…the worlds end was really calm. Needless to say…we left.
ANYWAY.
Edinburgh Castle. Built in some year you don’t care about for defensive purposes. Look at the pretty pictures.
Prreetttyyyyy
Castle
oooooooo
View out of the castle.
So inside the castle they keep their royal jewels and also this stone called the Scone..pronounced scooooon. Not like the food which is basically a stone with two footprints in it. As I said, Scots take their power from the land and the old kings would literally carve their footprints into a stone. Basically, England…being the jerks they are…carved the rock out of the mountain and took it to england. As you do. To further humiliate the Scots they put the stone under the coronation chair. They are very into symbolism here so the kings were literally crowned over the power of scotland. So. A few scottish frat boys…more or less…decided to break into Westminister and steal the stone back. Awesome? Yes. BAMF-y? Def.
Anyway there are also giant cannons on this site. We were warned that we could take pictures with them but were not allowed to stuff our friends inside. Obviously this meant an immidiate change in the afternoons plans.
Then we ran (literally we were late) to a tour of a georgian mansion which was really very cool. With all the furniture and set ups that they would have had.
Amusing anecdote. When we were hustling to the house I turned around to alert Hannah and friend that we had about 5 min to go about 15 min and found myself basically yelling into the faces of 15 scotsman. American diplomacy at its best.
Then we headed to a Bank. Lame sounding but check out the ceiling.
And finished off the day with real tea at The Dome which smelled like christmas and was all decorated with lights and trees. So haapppyyyy. and then I made a silly decision…to go on a ghost tour.
Now it was school sanctioned and Forbes recommened we try it so we could see the vaults basically walled in arches of a bridge that because of leaking problems couldn’t be used as anything so the criminals moved in. Apparently alot of bad stuff went down in these vaults and they are supposed to be quite haunted. Mercat Ghost tour? Never again. As we walked to the vaults our tourguide pointed out some kids dressed all in black skulking around outside a church. He called them emus…we’re pretty sure he meant emos. Amused. Then into the vault we went. There were some crazy stories that the guide was telling us about people on the tour being possessed and seeing ghosts including a friendly cobbler, a crazy creepy “Watcher” who just watched and yelled “GET OUT” at people. The tour guide also yelled GET OUT at us when telling us this story. Which was fun since he had been speaking really quietly and telling us how we were in what the BBC called the most haunted room in Scotland…I almost cried. There was one ghost who was supposed to hate women and kick and scratch at them. Fun? Yes. Anyway…nothing happened big surprise but it was a small dark place with the potential for terrifying things. Because apparently I have convinced myself these things are good “experiences”.
After all this we headed out to dinner and a Scottish Pub called The Royal Mile. This place made me fall in love with Scotland and the people who live here. They are so vibrant and full of life and they love american music! The live band played us some Kings of Leon (We heard the song Sex on Fire about 9 times), some Johnny Cash while we enjoyed our strong bow. This was where …a guy checked me out and then acknowledged me by tipping his hat. Very polite. I like it. We hung out for a while and then headed back in the pouring rain to the hotel.
We headed out again at the crack of dawn (9am) for our bus tour outside of Edinburgh tour day starting at Dunfermline basically the ruins of an old abbey. I’ll show pictures but its really not super fascinating so…yeah..
Then we headed out to Burntisland which is a coastal town with a really cool square church with a very cool graveyard.
And then to Elie another seaside village where we stopped for lunch at a pub.
This pub became a historic site for me as it was the first and last time that I tried Haggis, a scottish dish. Bleh. Ground up baby lamb bits cooked in baby lamb stomach. Pass. So icky.
The beach
Heres some windblown pics of me, hannah and our new friend caroline. Don’t judge my fattness..i was wearing like 8 layers.
Caroline, Kasey, Hannah
Then we headed off to our last stop St.Andrews. Apparently a golf mecca. Who knew? Better than that. Who cared. Not me. But here is a picture of the 18th hole. Woo.
Then we headed over to the beach next to the green apparently its the one used in Chariots of Fire.
Christina and the seagulls
Beautiful reflective beach
Me! Windblown sexy hair and all.
Then we headed to the ruins of St. Andrews Cathedral
Cathedral
Sacred gravestone
We finished up at the St.Andrews Castle. Not much to do here but we did check out the siege tunnels that were built to attack the castle from beneath and preserved here. Hi. my names kasey and I’m clausterphobic. I went into the tunnels which at their smallest were about 3 feet high…I did not freak out. This is a minor miracle. I will be stealing a photo from hannah of the tunnel to post at a later date. I was too scared to take a photo. Go team.
Here is a quick photo from the castle looking out towards the water and land.
Then we headed back to Edinburgh and out to dinner at a lovely italian place where we had some problems understanding the waiter and he had no idea what we were talking about. Good times. Great food though. From there we headed out to find a bar..ended up at the scariest pub ever called the black bull pub. One of those pubs you walk into and feel like without your leather gear and a harley..you can’t swing it. Needless to say we peaced pretty fast. We found a bar called the Bank Bar..an old bank converted to a bar…as you might assume with some great live music although the singer prefered to banter with the crowd and only played about 9 songs in the 1.5 hours we were there (hannah sang with him once) before heading to a pub in the Grass Market area. no one could remember what this area was called throughout the weekend..it was called green market grass place green grass market basically any combination of those words. We dragged ourselves back to the hotel and crashed.
Sunday (and you’ll note these are getting less descriptive because you’re probably not reading at this point anyway) was pretty laid back. We went to the Scottish gallery of art and saw some cool paintings some scottish some by people like Rapheal (feel free to think about teenage mutant ninja turtles I’ll wait.) and then to the Scottish Musuem of history. We spent a total of about 20 min in both of these before we were set free. A group of us girls decided to climb to Arthurs Seat. A giant GIANT hilltop with a path to the top which was at what we would discover would be about a 45 degree angle. Dislike. Then we grabbed some pub grub and shopped around till we had to catch the train back to London Pictures to follow of Arthurs Seat:
View from A. Seat
SHADOW PICTURE!
So steep.
Another fun fact on the train ride home hannah and met the youngest pilot in the Royal Air Force. At age 19 he was more badass then i will ever be. Awesome? Yes. Also, yes, i saw a ton of men in kilts which brings me to my next point.
As this is the longest post ever i’m going to give all of you who stuck it out a little treat. The answer to the question that titles this post? Nothing. And rumor has it if you ask they’ll demonstrate for you.
Cheers,
Kc
P.S. for my own personal enjoyment when i read this many years from now. Katie got up to take a shower but I needed to jump in so i could do my hair before class. I knocked on the door she was already in her towel. We rock-paper-scissored for the shower. i won. Best roommate that she is graciously accepted and went back into her room. Good times.
