Scotland!

So last weekend we decided to head up to Edinburgh, Scotland for a few days.  It was awesome.  We left early Friday morning, hopped the bus to the Lancaster train station and boarded the train to Edinburgh.  From Lancaster the trip was about 3 hours, not too bad of a train ride.  I played with my Rubiks cube the way up.  I can solve it with the help of a cheat sheet but I still have a bunch of other train rides to practice up.

Anyway, Scotland is beautiful.  We were fortunate to get fantastic weather too.  After getting off the train, we walked to our hostel which was sort of on the outskirts of town but not too bad of a walk to the main attractions.  Our hostel was on Douglas Gardens too which was kind of cool.  It was an old church and out room had just enough room for 3 sets of bunk beds for 6 people total.  Since it was an old cathedral, there were no ceilings on the rooms so if someone so much as sneezed, everyone in the hostel could hear it.  This was an issue both nights at some other travels came back pretty drunk and made quite the noise at about 3am.  You get what you pay for though.

The main attraction in Edinburgh is the castle on the hill.  Needless to say, it is an impressive building and the UK's crown jewels are in the castle too.  Half of our crew went on a tour of the castle but I came across a brochure for an Ian Fleming James Bond cover art exhibit at the City Centre Museum.  You can take a guess at where I went.  The Bond exhibit was awesome.  I saw letters from Ian Fleming about changes he wanted on the covers of his books as well all the different covers from different countries for a bunch of the books written.  My two favorite pieces was the letter from Hugh Hefner from 1964 that invited Fleming out to the Chicago Playboy mansion and if Fleming wanted to use the mansion in a movie, he was more than welcome.  My other favorite piece was a letter from an Israeli airline that sent a note to Fleming after reading From Russia with Love that the travel agent in the book should have known that this Israeli airline could have flown Bond back to London nonstop rather than the airline that the fictional travel agent put Bond on in the book.  I was amused.

Another highlight from the trip was going through the Scottish Parliament Building.  It is very modern and unlike where our Congress debates.  Certainly worth going through.  I also got to see the grave-site of Adam Smith, who wrote "Wealth of Nations."  We also walked out to the Firth of Forth, the major waterway that Edinburgh is on.

In the middle of Edinburgh lies a bunch of hills that you can climb and get a sweet view of the city.  It was quite the walk up but well worth the trip.  At the top of the biggest hill is Arthur's seat which apparently was named after King Arthur.  Google it I guess.  We did a lot of walking and I was pretty exhausted each night but it was an awesome trip.

Sidenote for Harry Potter fans, in Edinburgh you can go to the cafe type place where JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book.  It had a bunch of elephants there.  They were obviously advertising this fact on the outside of the cafe.  That's how I knew.

So yeah, that's what I did this weekend.  It was a lot of fun and well worth the trip. I do promise pictures are coming.  Until we talk again, have a good week!