Katie's Travels: Norway: Edinburgh, Scotland

Now I have officially been to three of the four countries I have ancestry from, I only have Germany left. I took the 7:30 train to Edinburgh this morning and got to Edinburgh around 12:30. The northern England and Scottish countryside are absolutely gorgeous! I wish I had had a window seat for that leg of the journey so I could take decent pictures of. I loved the city of Edinburgh! It was beautiful and actually has quite a history behind it. I learned that the term "shit-face drunk" comes from Edinburgh during the 1700s. Edinburgh didn't not have toilets so everyone used basins and the city passed a law saying everyone could dump their basins in the street after 10:30 at night. Well, all the pubs were closing so when the drunks were walking home and someone would yell that they were about to dump their basin, the drunk person would look up; hence, shit-face drunk. Okay back to my tour, which I was really lucky with because it didn't rain, it was only windy. I mean windy, when I first stepped out of the train I was nearly knocked over by the wind and quite a few more times afterward. So we started on the Royal Mile, which the original Edinburgh was only one mile long and a quarter mile wide, which is where the Royal Mile is (it leads up to Edinburgh Castle). I met my tour pretty much in the middle of te Royal Mile and we started. There is so much history about Edinburgh I learned today, I don't think I'll remember half of it by the time I get back to my hostel to write in my journal. We started just walking around the Royal Mile and learning all about the history of the city, starting 320 million years ago (that's when the volcano that Edinburgh Castle sits atop first erupted to create Scotland). We walked by St. Guiles Cathedral, Edinburgh Castle, and a bunch of other places I don't even remember. I bought some souvenirs while I was there, of course, during our break. I also went to Mary's Milk Bar during the break because it was one of the "must sees" according to a lot of websites on Google. It did indeed have amazing ice cream like all of the sites said, plus it had a great view of Edinburgh Castle. I actually met a girl from Minnesota on my tour! She is studying abroad this semester in Paris and took a weekend trip to Edinburgh. She's from the cities so when she asked where I was from I just said a small little town in northwestern Minnesota. Later on she asked if I knew where Roseau or Warroad were because she's been there and I started laughing and said yes I was in the neighboring town. After my tour concluded, I booked it back to the train station to catch my train (I had about 20 minutes to do this and made it luckily). I got to ride first class all the way back to London and loved every minute of it. It's about a 4 and a half hour train ride. I got free snacks, Pepsi, and an outlet to charge my phone! Plus I had a window so I was able to take some pictures of the countryside. Overall, I absolutely loved Scotland and definently need to study abroad there or at least take a long vacation there (hint hint mom and dad). I would rank Scotland right up there with Norway as one of my favorite countries (which says a lot). Side note: I just used the bathroom on the train and the toilet seat says "Please don't flush sanitary napkins, diapers, old phones, your ex's unpaid bills, hopes, dreams, or goldfish down this toilet" which I thought was hilarious.

This monument was right outside Waverly train station. My tour didn't go here and I don't have wifi right now (I'm actually on the train back right now) to tell you what it is.