Edinburgh

I've officially been here a month now! The lecture series is over, and tutorials begin in two weeks. This week was our alloted time for vacation before the craziness begins, and vacation we did!

Edinburgh

Janet, Anna, and I traveled up to Edinburgh for the break. We decided to stay in the UK and explore some, and we also really wanted to see Scotland. Trains are the way to travel here, I believe; we took the train from here in Oxford all the way directly to Edinburgh. Since I live right next to the train station, it is especially convenient too! We all bought the young savers rail pass, which gives us a discounted rate because we're students. So on Monday, we hopped on the train in the morning for the long ride north. Believe it or not, I had previously never traveled anywhere by train, at least that I can remember, so I was pretty stoked about this. Mostly I was excited about seeing the English countryside! I wrote down all of our stops:

Oxford - leave at 8:36 am
Banbury - 8:54
Leamington Spa - 9:15
Coventry - 9:25
Birmingham International - 9:35 (A lot of people got off the train here...it was packed when we got on at Oxford)
Birmingham New Street - 9:45 (more people got off here too)
Wolverhampton - 10:20
Crewe - 10:50
Warrington - 11:15
Wigan - 11:25
Preston - 11:40 (it began to rain around this time)
Lancaster - 12:00
Penrith - 12:40
Carlisle - 1:00
Haymarket - 2:05
Edinburgh - 2:30

While we were on the train, I was really itching for a map to see where all these places were. It turns out that we traveled up the middle-west coast of England and then east to Edinburgh.

Edinburgh is a really great city! My first impression walking out of the train station was this sense of awe; Edinburgh is very cold, dark, and grey but it had a lively and welcoming feel to it. The oldest part of the city is centered around the Castle, which is at the top of this massive hill and situation on this massive rock. From there, the Royal Mile flows down from the castle to the Firth of Forth. Really beautiful. Amazingly enough, our hostel was right in the middle of the city just in the shadow of the Castle! For a hostel, this place was great; it seemed very credible and safe. We got settled in and then went down and explored the Royal Mile.

The first thing we did was pay a visit to John Knox's house! The Father of Presbyterianism! There was a little museum inside that you could visit and read all about this great Reformer. Janet and I really loved this place, and it was cool to see where John Knox lived for a while. There is a church on the Royal Mile, St. Giles, where he also preached.

After that, we went to Mary King's Close. Long story short, sometime during the black plague, the city counsel wanted to build more government buildings, so they just built on top of these poor people's houses, and they became this web of underground closes. The place is awesome, really creepy too. It was totally worth seeing, they take you on a little tour and tell you all about the history of it.

At night we went on a ghost tour! Our guide was pretty good, but I felt bad because these drunk Kiwis (who were there from the rugby game) kept interrupting him and causing trouble. Apart from that, it was very interesting because he took us around Edinburgh at night and told us all of these historical stories about people who were punished and tortured for crimes, stories involving names like "One Armed Johnny", so you know they're good. He also took us into some vault, which was a bit creepy. It wasn't all weird stuff though; Janet carefully choose this one because it seemed less sketch and more historical.

The next day we went up into Edinburgh Castle! Once you get up into the castle, there are amazing viewpoints of the entire city. You can see the Firth of Forth, the whole Royal mile, the shore on the other side, and so on. I stood there for a while just looking out at Scotland. Later that morning, a rainbow rested over the firth that was absolutely beautiful! Of course, there were a lot of exhibits about all this historical stuff, and that was all well and good.

After that, I went to the Scotch Whiskey Experience! It was cool, I felt like I was on a History Channel show! They gave us some good Scotch Whiskey to taste, and then we learned all about how it was made. Very cool stuff. I got a free little whiskey glass.

We explored more of Edinburgh in the afternoon - walked up to the National Monument, which looks like the Parthenon. Again, another amazing vantage point from there. That night we ate a pub, had some haggis, of course, and went to another pub for some live music.

Wednesday was the big day of our vacation - Loch Ness! We booked a day trip type of bus tour up to Loch Ness, and it was well worth it. Our guide was awesome - he was from the Highlands and knew everything about Scottish history and the clans and such. They gave us a map to look at while we drove along, which was very nice of them, so we could actually see where we were going in Scotland. I, of course, took down our route:

A8
M9
Stirling - we saw the William Wallace memorial here and some other castle
A85
Doune
Callender
Killmahog - we got out and saw this highland cow named Hamish. It was cool.
A82
Tyandrum
Glencoe - by this time, we were well into the highlands! Glencoe is an amazing place. There are three mountains called the Three Sisters which are right next to each other. Stunning, stunning scenery. Took video here.
Passed Lock Linnhe
Ft. William
Nevis
Spean Bridge - stopped here for lunch
Fort Agustus
LOCH NESS!

Loch Ness was worth every effort of going to. I was expecting an ultra-cheesy tourist trap, but where we were at least, there was no such thing. It is such a pristine, beautiful lake surrounded by gigantic mountains. We took a one hour boat ride on the loch, but unfortunately I did not spot the monster at all. I was really hoping to :) Great, great experience though. One random thing: on the boat, in the middle of Loch Ness, we met a girl from George Mason! She went to Law School there! It was totally random. What are the chances?

We took a different route on the way home:

A82
A86 south to Perth (these were some sketchy mountain roads! no lines! curvy! and the guy was driving FAST!)
Strath Marshy
A889
A9
Pitlochry
M70
Edinburgh

It was wonderful seeing Scotland like this. I definitly want to go back one day to hike through the highlands.

The last day we were there, we went to a couple of museums, shopped, and just hung out for a while, enjoying the city.

While we were in Edinburgh, I was constantly looking for a good map of the whole of Great Britain. I had reached the point where I really wanted to see where all these places were on a real map. I finally found one I liked in the train station just before we left - it is a complete motorist's atlas of Great Britain. Janet and Anna can tell you, I was stoked to have finally found a map I liked (I had also bought two of Edinburgh). Map in hand, I routed our train journey home as well. It went like this:

Edinburgh - 15:05
Dunbar - 15:30 (a pretty city on the east coast - we went down the east side of Britain this time, and we got to see the sea for a while!)
Berwich-upon-Tweed - 15:55
Newcastle - 16:35 (awesome place, lots of cool bridges)
Durham - 16:55 (there was a huge castle here!)
York - 17:45
Leeds - 18:05
Wakefield - 18:20
Sheffield - 18:50
Derby - 19:25
Birmingham - 20:00 (this is the second biggest city in England)
Birmingham International - 20:15
Conventry - 20:30
Leamington Spa - 20:40
Banbury - 21:00
Oxford - 21:00

And so was our trip. On the way home from the train station, we stopped by Botley Kebab for dinner, which was really good; a lot of food for not a lot of money.