edinburgh

I spent the last weekend in Edinburgh visiting my friend, Arianna. She and I met in the dorms and lived together for most of our second year at Santa Barbara. After we moved out, she headed off to study abroad, so I haven't seen her in a while. It was great to be reuinted, albeit brief.

Edinburgh is beautiful! I could definitely never live there because the weather is so terrible, but the green hills are definitely a pleasant contrast to the gloomy clouds.

Arianna lives in the center of Edinburgh (specifically in the cow gate), which is nice. The city is small with somewhere around 450,000 inhabitants. It was cool that everything was really near her house and I ended up seeing important sites multiple times over my short weekend visit.Behind me is Edinburgh Castle, situated on a hill. I am thrilled that Hogwarts (the school of witchcraft and wizardry in Harry Potter) is based on this castle. I am a total nerd for the books. We passed by and went in the Elephant Cafe where J.K. Rowling began writing the books on napkins with a seat by the window looking up at this castle.

I really had an affinity to St. Giles' Cathedral, pictured above. There was so much character inside with vibrant stained glass windows, intricate ceiling arches, wood carvings and spirited clan flags.

We went out that night to a ceidilh (pronounced kay-lee) which was one of the funnest nights I've ever had. There was an older crowd, but it made it all the better. We did all sorts of traditional dancing - and laughing.

Pleasanton hosts Scottish games every September, so if there's a ceidilh event, I am definitely dragging some people along with me. [hint hint]

The ceidilh ended relatively early so we went out to an Irish pub afterwards which had, well, a bunch of Irish people. Apparently everyone comes to Edinburgh for stag and hen (or bachelor and bachelorette) parties, so it was typical for me to hang out with these groups of wild people. I noticed the following day tons of groups of stag and hen parties all dressed up running around the city.

We went out to a traditional Scottish breakfast on Saturday morning. This heartily includes toast, baked beans, sausage, bacon, mushrooms, an egg...

... and haggis! Yep, I ate it all.

We walked afterwards down the Royal Mile which ends down at the bottom of a hill at Parlaiment. The Parlaiment building is apprantly hated by the Scottish people because it is too modern, but I liked the organic elements.We walked up to one of the main vistas overlooking Edinburgh. Behind Arianna in this picture is King Arthur's seat, which has the highest view. We went instead to Calton Hill, which was really nice, especially when the sun started to show itself.Then we hurried down around to the Princes Street Gardens to take advantage of the sun.Behind this piper is Scotts Monument, which is situated in the center of the city.Another view up towards Edinburgh Castle from Princes Street West Gardens.

We continued walking (lots and lots of walking over the weekend) back around the city center to Ariannas house to hang out. Her flatmates were so welcoming and kind. In general, I really liked the Scottish people, especially when strangers answer questions with "aye, love" or other endearing sayings.

We had another night out, where I got to try a very interesting soda. I was told that Scottland is the only country where CocaCola is not the #1 selling softdrink. Distributed and wildly popular in Scottland alone is Irn-Bru, a bright orange soda, which I thought tasted like bubble gum...

It was another fun night, but I had to get up super early on Sunday to catch my 7am flight outside the city.

Yet another great weekend! And now for the schoolwork...