Was that English?

In my never-ending effort to catch up on blogging, here is a post about my trip to the UK with my Carleton friends Emily and Lia over winter break. Lia and Emily planned the trip, then I found out about it and decided to tag along. I'm splitting this trip into two posts, this one is about the first few days in Edinburgh and the next will be about the rest of the time in London. In an effort to keep costs low, I flew with a budget airline called Ryanair for the first time (and possibly the last). In order to get to Edinburgh, my first day of travel consisted of a bus to the train station, two trains to oslo, a bus to one of the Oslo ghetto airports, a plane to Edinburgh, and a bus to the station near our hostel. I am fairly amazed that I didn't mess up any connections.

Once I got to the hostel in Edinburgh, I was greeted by these two friendly faces! This ally led from our hostel up to the Royal Mile.

 On the first day of exploring we headed up to the Royal Mile. Emily stopped to check out one of the many shops, while Lia and I waited outside. An old man came up to us and started talking to us, but all I could understand through his thick Scottish accent was, "You can't just stand there..." I assumed he was upset at us for blocking the sidewalk, so I went into smile-and-nod mode. After he left I turned to Lia with my confused look, and she luckily caught a little more of the conversation. It turns out that he wanted us to really explore the Royal Mile and its side streets, rather than just take a straight shot down the street. This was the first of many times that we had to stop and ask ourselves, "Was that English?"

Here we have the fairly new Scottish Parliament with Salisbury Crags in the background, I think. I'm just going to have to make up names for some of these pictures because I don't actually know the real names.

When you look down the line of bike racks at the Scottish Parliament, they make an outline of a bicycle! I was pretty excited when I realized that.

Inside the parliament building they had a bunch of art on display.  My favorite was this public awareness campaign for drunk driving. If you pop the bottle cap, you crash the car.

We hiked up Salisbury Crags and got some pretty good views of the city.

One of the many pictures I am stealing from Lia and Emily for this post. We picked the right day to make this short hike up Salisbury Crags, because it was too cloudy to have a good view the next couple of days.

We visited way too many Churches for me to keep track of them all, but I'm fairly certain this is Saint John's Cathedral.

 We visited the Museum of Childhood, or some crazy place like that. Not at all what I expected. It was actually fairly creepy and mildly depressing. But we did get in a thrilling game of serpentine monsters and rocket ships (shoots and ladders in disguise). Also, there was a family speaking Norwegian at this museum, so naturally I strained myself trying to eavesdrop. I was mostly unsuccessful.

Yes. This is a doll made from an old shoe. I think little Miss Heel-face here would be just a little too traumatizing for little kids. They would be better off just playing with their imaginary friends or playing violent video games.

[Cue eerily enthusiastic smile] Slow and steady wins the race! (Except in real life: then you just have to be really fast.)

Emily is ready for a polo match... or a play date!

That day we saw a place called The Baked Potato Shop beside another shop called Miss Katie Cupcake on one of the side streets. "Hottest tatties in town!" was written on the awning of The Baked Potato Shop. Initially I assumed both of these shops were named after the type of food sold there. Commence confusion. Looking into the window of Miss Katie Cupcake, I saw that it was not at all a cupcake store, but more likely an antique shop. Then I came to the false conclusion that tatties must be slang for tattoos (I don't know British slang) and that The Baked Potato Shop was just an ironically named tattoo parlor. Wrong again. The Baked Potato Shop was exactly what it sounds like: a shop that sells (delicious, delicious) baked potatoes. Dinner plans were thereby set. I was somewhat skeptical, but the cheese and bean tattie turned out to be tasty and filling.

Back in our hostel lounge with the hottest tatties in town (so hot that the steam made my photo blurry). Best deal on dinner of the whole trip!

Being a tourist is hard work. This picture really sums up how we all felt at the end of each day.

Inside Saint Giles Cathedral, Emily befriended an elderly man working there and won us a special tour and history lesson.

Outside Saint Giles Cathedral with a really depressing Christmas tree. Seriously, it's tied down by the strings of lights and caged in. This tree is not escaping any time soon. And the peace signs start.

This is where you take a stand against taxation without consent by spitting on the heart marking the location of an old tax booth. It is also a popular place for non-locals to propose. If only they knew about the cocktail of spit that they kneel in.

Peace, tatts, and Mary King's Close.

This is what I had to put up with the whole time. Thank goodness I'm so mature and would never do something like that.

Da castle. Peace yo.

Looking in the opposite direction of the castle we find the best apartments in town on the left there. But seriously, living there would be awesome.

We visited the Elephant House, the cafe where J.K. Rowling wrote the first couple HP books. It looks out over the castle, a graveyard, and a fancy-pants private school that all supposedly provided inspiration for the books. We visited the graveyard and found a few of the character names there.

With enthusiastic smiles like that you would never guess we were in a graveyard. We found Professor McGonagall here.

A sampling of the graffiti in the men's bathroom at the Elephant House.

Going back to the Baked Potato Shop story, later on we found another shop selling baked potatoes across the street from a tattoo parlor. This led to our idea of a new business called Tatties and Tatts, where you can eat a tasty baked potato while you get a tattoo!

Maybe it's hard to see, but the tattoo parlor is on the left, and Tempting Tattie is on the right.

We stopped by the royal residence at Holyrood, and Emily and Lia had a tea party outside the gates.

I brought my own biscuits to this cafe/pub to have with my coffee. I just had to be sneaky about it, hence the guilty smile. I think this cafe was right by the public gallows. Yum.

We then hiked up to Calton Hill where we were rewarded by awesome views and a random collection of monuments.

Emily and I climbed up onto the pillar monument for Lia to take a picture, and then we started dramatically pointing...

...when we realized Lia was in place for this sweet pic. 

And this one, too. More of that random collection of monuments on Calton Hill.

Those biscuits again. Cookies on the cannon on Calton.

Our favorite past-time was visiting churches for carol services. This one offered free mulled wine and mince pies afterward. Genious.

If I could explain this, I would.

So in summary, our take on Edinburgh was basically tatties (not to be confused with tatts), biscuits (which I would confuse with cookies), mince pies (which don't actually have any meat in them), and mulled wine (which is just a good idea). Next post: London.