A full day in Edinburgh (4 August)

I officially like Edinburgh. We are basically on our own for the last two days here in Scotland, so I made plans with Chrisse and Kathryn, who have similar interests as I.

We started the day with a 3-hour walking tour. This was a perfect way to start. I always love hearing the history from the locals (and hearing their dialect), but ironically our guide, Brendan, was Irish. I guess I’ve come full-circle in the British Isles, starting and finishing with the Irish. Anyway, the tour was great because it was free (except for a tip), informative, and entertaining. It rained for half of it, but I’ve learned not to mind so much. Our group was pretty small because it was early in the morning—there were about 8 of us—and it was fun to talk to the different people from France, Russia, Brazil, and Canada.

We actually had a funny thing happen when we were in a cemetery. In this cemetery there’s a dog named Bobby buried. Apparently this dog had stayed by his master’s grave for 14 years or something like that. BBC (the major British news channel) was doing a report on it because there had recently been an article published saying that the whole story was just invented as a tourist trap. They taped part of Brendan’s schpeal about the dog and the interviewed some of us about it. I was the first one they interviewed and it was kind of funny because I don’t really have an opinion about dog things. Anyway, this whole thing helped break the ice in our tour group. Then afterwards we went to a pub and got haggis (a sort of sausage thing) with neeps and tatties (=haggis + turnips + potatoes), the traditional Scottish meal. It’s the national dish, and it wasn’t bad at all.

Here's part of the report on Bobby: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-14424513

One interesting thing I learned about in the tour is the Scottish move toward independence. They are quite nationalistic here and not too happy to be a part of the British Commonwealth. Scotland has already demonstrated some autonomy, for example, they have their own national religion and their own parliament. In the last election, the party that wants independence got the majority vote in parliament and they plan to have a vote for independence in 2014. Stay tuned.

The cafe where JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter

Bobby's grave, where I was interviewed by BBC

View of Edinburgh Castle from below

Eating haggis after the tour with our new Brazilian friend

We went through the Scottish National Gallery. I was most interested in the Scottish artist’s interpretations of the landscape, since that’s really what I think Scotland is most memorable for. But I also got to see some work by Raphael, Rembrandt, Monet, and Seurat.

The rest of the night was not very blog worthy, so I’ll stop writing about it. But we did go to ice cream to celebrate Suzanne’s birthday.