A Weekend In Edinburgh, Scotland (Part 1)

A Train Through the Country and a Tour Through the Old Town

(Being the adventures of:)
JANUARY 22, 2011

Where we last left off, I was dashing out of my apartment to meet up with some friends and catch the 7:00pm train from King's Cross Station. It was currently 6:10pm and there was still a tube to catch to get to King's Cross, so we were a little time-constrained..

.. well, to make a long story short, three of us met up, but were unsure where the other two were. After waiting and looking around, each group looking for each other (as we later found out, in separate areas of the station..), we eventually had to just take the tube and hope for the best. We arrived at King's Cross at 7 on the nose. Needless to say, we missed that train.. The good thing about our tickets, though, is that they're not slated for a particular time - basically, we can catch any train from any London station to Edinburgh as long as it's sometime that day. Well, our hopes were dashed when we were told there were no more trains to Edinburgh from King's Cross that night. We could, however head over to the London Euston station and see what they had to offer. When we got there, we were told there was an 11:00pm train that got into Edinburgh around 4am. We figured that wasn't too bad, as we could check into the hostel anytime and could sleep more once we got there. Let me remind you that it was about 7:30pm at this point. Three and a half hours at a train station was not looking like a lot of fun.. but, in summary, with a little Burger King and a cookie to hold me over (I had packed a peanut butter sandwich and some chips, but that didn't last very long), we persevered. As 11:00pm rolled around, we realized it was actually an 11:50pm train that got in at 7am, rather than what we were previously told. A little deterred by the whole situation, we eventually board the correct train..

.. and it was pretty awesome, actually. It was a Caledonian Sleeper train, which meant that half the train was beds (which needed to be reserved ahead-of-time, sadly) and the other half were pretty comfy reclinable seats. There was also barely anyone on board, so we had out pick of the seated section. I snuggled up against a window, a recently-bought Snickers in my hand for the road, and reclined back in my seat for the long train to Edinburgh, Scotland.

Our train

Leaving Euston Station

Our almost-empty cabin and comfy seats!

Goodbye London!

Because London is really the only city I'd ever visited in Europe, I was pretty excited to see Edinburgh. That's pretty much all I thought about for the first little bit of the trip, while also doing a couple crosswords - there's not much to look out the window and see in the middle of the night in the English countryside. I slept on and off, waking up when we would stop at various locations for either more passengers or to change tracks - there was even one time where they split the train and half went to Glasgow and our half went to Edinburgh. It was pretty crazy; after a bunch of clanking, we were all of a sudden moving backwards. When we'd stop, I'd peer out the window to see the station name and then unfold my map of the UK and attempt to deduce where we were in our trip. Our northward journey took us upwards through a couple small British towns, then we hit Carlisle on the border of England and Scotland. Once in Scotland, the train split at Carstairs and we were on the last leg of the journey. The pre-dawn fog was beginning to settle in as lights started to pass by my window. Soon, we were passing into a sleepy city at 7:00am, the brakes of the train screeching to a halt at its final destination: Edinburgh, Scotland.

Oh hello, Edinburgh

We stepped out into the cold night air (not that the day air was any warmer, as we soon found out) and trudged up a hill in search of our hostel, the High Street Hostel.

Our hostel! (obviously, this wasn't taken at 7am, but oh well)

We got inside and the friendly 24/7 staff gave us the keys to our rooms. The funny thing about the place was that all of their rooms were themed. The four girls I was traveling with all had their own room, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles room, with each of the beds labeled with one of the character names - that's how the hostel organized who was where. I was in the Three Musketeers room in the d'Artagnan bed (technically, he wasn't one of the Three Musketeers, but close enough).

All for one and one for all! (Literally: I had the room to myself!)

The noble youth!

Bedtime. I caught some shut-eye for a couple hours until around 930, when I woke up to get ready for the day ahead. We all got together a little after 10 and went out into a cold and foggy Edinburgh morning. We didn't have to search far for breakfast - a little place right across the street looked like just what we wanted.

The Edinburgh Larder

Inside the cafe

The Edinburgh Larder was awesome! It had great, cheap breakfast and that morning I had a delicious croissant with butter and jam, with an espresso shot to wake me up! Some of the others had tea, which they said was pretty fabulous. I'm not much of a tea drinker.. I think it tastes like bad water. I wish I was though, for this sort of thing. I feel like it's similar to my wanting to try different beers - different teas in different places sounds like a cool idea. Oh well. Anyway, we wrapped up and went back outside for a free 3-hour walking tour around Edinburgh (the same tour company that did our great tour in London!). Here's what we saw:

Looking down The Royal Mile, the main street of the Old Town portion of Edinburgh

Neat buildings everywhere, even if this one was under construction

Looking up the street

A clocktower. Loved the architecture here

Beginning the tour and walking up The Royal Mile

Adam Smith (apparently he's pretty famous in Scotland; I don't remember why. Something with the economy)

St. Giles Cathedral, from the back

Neat statue

More cool buildings

The town center, used in different ways: in old times, it was used to punish prisoners by pinning them up by their earlobes and having people throw things at them! It was also used (and still is today) to make announcements regarding the state of the UK - a man would stand on top, ring a bell, and yell to everyone what the big news was.

Pillared buildings, sphinxes on the roof..? Our tour guide explained that Edinburgh was at one point a very popular and powerful city. It wanted to show that it was very worldly, so it began to use architecture styles and other things from foreign lands. Neat stuff.

St. Giles Cathedral from the front. Just an awesome building.

A bagpipe player! I don't know if they really enjoy listening to bagpipes (I thought it was an untrue stereotype) or if it's just for the tourists, but either way it's pretty neat.

Another statue

Another cool building, I think this was part of the Scottish Parliament

The 'Heart of Midlothian', a marker for where the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, a 15th-century prison, stood. You can see many passing people spit on it - originally, this was because of disdain for the history of executions that took place here, but is now considered to be good luck. I spit on it! My spit is in Edinburgh!

Looking down the street. The sun's beginning to finally come out, but it's still pretty cold!

Looking back up the street. Ahhh such cool buildings, I just love it

I forget what that is.. maybe their Justice building or something..?

Such old houses

A neat old church

Scottish people LOVE Robert Burns. He's a famous 18th-century poet, actually regarded as the national poet of Scotland. He's pretty good, I like his one called 'A Red, Red Rose'. Here's  piece of it; notice the Scottish dialect.

O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
That’s sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry:

More neat old buildings

And again

Notice the third "step". It's much shorter than the others and was a primitive version of a 'burglar alarm'. What would happen is that while you would know which was the trick step and could hop it, a burglar would trip as he walked up or down the stairs and if he yelled, you'd wake up. Pretty neat

Closer view of that cool church. An interesting side-note that our guide told us about: people aren't that big into going to church over here, so a lot of churches go out of business and are sold to private companies. Here, an old church is converted to a pub/'ticketmaster'. Crazy stuff. A bit sad because of how beautiful the architecture is, but it's an old city so I guess sometimes that happens

Another church, probably turned into something else

Down another street. Edinburgh is a city built on hills so it's always up and down with the streets

Up another street

Beautiful view across a bit of the city. George Heriot's school on the horizon, but there will be more on that later

Looking down on 'The Grassmarket', a former market area

And again

Oh hello there. Edinburgh Castle over my shoulder. Unreal!

Edinburgh Castle. It's massive.

Looking down The Grassmarket

.. and up

This one is for my friends back home. Enjoy, boys

More hills

The National Museum, another thing we'll get to later

Another cool church

Another hill and cool buildings

More buildings.

Another view of the Museum

The Greyfriar's Kirk (church)

Looking back at the city from the the Kirkyard (cemetery)

Another view of the Kirk

Gravestone of John Gray, or Auld Jock, an old night-watchman of the cemetery. He had a little dog, a  Skye Terrier named Bobby, who was with him for two years before John died. Afterwards, it's said that Bobby guarded his grave, not leaving it for almost 14 years! People would come by and feed him, and he'd lay right there by his old master. What a neat story!

The Kirk from the other side

More of the Kirkyard

Through an archway. I liked it because it was called the 'Flodden Wall' and that was funny to me for some reason.

Edinburgh Castle in the distance

Looking through the gates at George Heriot's school

George Heriot's school was originally a school for underprivileged kids

It's said to have been one of the inspirations for 'Hogwarts' in the Harry Potter books. J.K. Rowling, who spent time in Edinburgh while writing the first book, was known to have come to this cemetery and see the school regularly

Rowling would even walk through the cemetery and use names that she found, like here where we found McGonagall!

.. and Tom Riddle! Ahhhh Voldemort!!!

Another view of Heriot's

The supposedly haunted mausoleum of 'Bloody' George Mackenzie!

For my friends at home - "Can I get an 'x' here?"

I can't remember what this thing is called, but it's built into the ground around a grave so as to protect it from grave-robbers, which used to be  HUGE problem in Edinburgh

A statue of Greyfriar's Bobby!

The Elephant House, where J.K. Rowling reportedly wrote the first Harry Potter book!

See? I told you!

Another view across the hilly city

The National Library

Well, now Blogspot is telling me I'm out of space for more pictures in this post.. so looks like it's going to be a two-part post! Geez, I didn't even make it all the way through the tour.. I must've taken a TON of pictures!

Good music to take the train to Edinburgh with:

We Were Promised Jetpacks - "It's Thunder and It's Lightning", off their fantastic album "These Four Walls"

A good ol' Scottish indie rock band. I love their sound, great song and album

Good music to tour Edinburgh with:

Belle & Sebastian - "Piazza, New York Catcher", off their album "Dear Catastrophe Waitress"

Belle & Sebastian are just classic. Real chill; good stuff. Oh and they're from Scotland too!

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Alrighty, looks like this will be continued in Part 2!

Cheers!