Here is the famous Edinburgh Castle!! I don't feel like I got a proper picture of it, because the pictures that I have don't truely do it justice. The castle is on top of a HUGE volcanic rock! Keep in mind I was in Edinburgh at the same time that the volcano had gone off in Iceland... so I was like ohh huge volcanic rock... exactly what I want to see... haha. But don't worry they assured me that it hasn't gone off 350 million years!! And don't worry you haven't missed any headlines... my luck held and it didn't go off while I was there haha.
Here is another view of the main city area with the castle in the background.
In Edinburgh they had a bus ticket deal. For 25 pounds I could ride 4 bus tours around the city for two days!! So I went on the busses a bunch of times!! I got a new guide almost every time, and I feel like I should know the city like the back of my hand... Towards the end I felt like I could give the commentary!!
This is the entrance to the castle. If you look on the right hand side you will see a statue of William Wallace aka Braveheart. This was another person that I was extremely excited to hear about, because I remembered his name from my days of playing Age of Empire!! I love how Age of Empire puts actual heroes of the past into the game... it made it fasinating to see the statues and to hear the stories behind them.
This is on the main street in Edinburgh called Princes's street. When I first arrived in Edinburgh I thought that it was Princess street, and I was refering to it as such... I guess the locals couldn't tell that I was asking directions to the wrong princess street instead of princes's street! Woohoo thank you foreign accent for saving me from feeling like a fool! Anyways!! This picture is a watch tower that guards the grave yard behind it. Apparently when you had a loved one that passed away and you buried them you hired a guard to stay in the watch tower during the night to protect the body from the body snatchers! People used to dig up bodies from their graves and sell them to the University in town to make extra money! And that made guard neccesary to keep the bodies in the grave! Apparently, if you didn't hire one... you didn't have a body for long!
I passed this statue on every single tour that I went on. It is a largest monument ever made for a writer. It is dedicated to Sir Walter Scott who wrote a novel called Waverly. There is a lot of things dedicated to Sir Walter Scott throughout Edinburgh. The Waverly Bridge (Where all of the busses started and ended for one) and they used to have a fruit market dedicated to him as well.
Now this might not be as obvious in the picture, and trust me... had it not been pointed out to me I would have never noticed the difference either... BUT if you look at the four older windows on the right hand side you will notice that it is black behind him. Well years ago there was a king that taxed the people of Edinburgh on just about everything... including windows. People had to pay a tax for each window that they had in their house. So people began to brick their windows over with black bricks so they wouldn't have to pay the extra tax. You can see in this window how half of the windows are bricked up. You see houses like this all over Edinburgh. People used to say that by having to brick up their windows they were losing light into their house... so it was "Daylight robbery" I've heard this saying before, and it was cool to hear how it came about.
I know that the quality of this picture is pretty bad, because I was inside of the bus when I quickly tried to snap this picture (it was cold and raining out!!) but there is a cool story behind this picture! Years ago a huge wall with a gate was built around the city. You were allowed to leave the city without paying any feels, but if you wanted to come back into the city you had to pay a fee to get back through the gate. This made it so that the poor people of the town could never leave the city. They lived their whole lives in the city, because they couldn't afford to pay the toll. This pub was right before the gate, and to the people of the city it was the end of the world, because it was as far as they could get in the world.
They say in Scotland the best way to be immortalized is to get a pub named after you...
If you scrolled in on this picture you would be able to read the story of Deacon Brodie. He was a respectable business man by day (as shown on the left) and then he was robber by night (on right). He would go into his clients homes and when they were looking he would get an imprint of their key, and make a copy. Then when they went out of town, or weren't in their home he would sneak in and rob them blind! Robert Stevenson grew up and lived in Edinburgh. He heard this story of Deacon Brodie and it inspired him to write Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde. Also, we drove past the place that Robert Stevenson grew up in as a child, and I saw the park that he used to play in. This park was his inspiration to eventually write Treasure Island. I would have taken pictures, but it's a private park... and they have trees and shrubs all around the border so that people can't really get a good look inside of the park.
Remember how I said that in order to get immortalized in Scotland you had to get a pub named after you?? Well... You'll never guess who Bobby is...
Meet Bobby!! Yes... he is a dog! He is famous because when Bobby was two years old his master died. Every single day until the dog died (12 years later) the dog would lie on his masters grave. People loved how faithful and sweet the dog was... years later a new law was passed in Edinburgh that every dog had to have a license. Any dog that didn't have a license was to be put down. The public was outraged by the fact that the city was considered putting this faithful dog down, and so much pressure was put on the mayor by the public that the mayor himself bought the dog it's license, and decreed that no one was to harm the dog, and that the dog was allowed full access to the city. Today, their is a grave with a tombstone near Bobby's bar where the dog is buried. They wanted to bury him next to his master, but the church wouldn't allow it. It's said that more people visit the dog's graveyard than the dog's masters, and every time we passed the grave on our tour I saw someone standing at this dogs grave.
And now... for the BEST part of Edinburgh :) Harry Potter! I know that this is a horrible picture. 1. I was sitting inside of the cabin 2. I was totally not expecting it. Ever so casually we were riding down the road, and we got stopped at a red light. So my tour guide pointed behind us, and says "Oh and behind us is Edinburgh University... most famous for graduating J. K. Rowling" And of course I was like... Gaaaasp! And I hurriedly tried to snap a picture of the building before we moved on. I have always heard that J.K. Rowling was actually on welfare when she wrote Harry Potter, and that the first verison of the Socerer's Stone was actually written on parts of napkins at a cafe in Edinburgh. Well at this point in the tour I was on it was just about over, so I asked the tour guide if he knew where the cafe was... And he told me that we'd actually passed it, and that if I went on his next bus tour he'd point it out to me! Well he ended up pointing out a lot more than that to me! :) SCORE!
This is an all boy's boarding school in Edinburgh that was supposively the inspiration for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy in the books. J.K. Rowling walked past it everyday, and when she was writing the first book it was this building she described.
This is the hotel that J.K. Rowling stays in when she visits the city. The top suite is also the room that she finished Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (6th book) inside of. :) If you walk into the hotel they have a signed manuscript on their front desk.
And here it is!! The cafe that J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book inside of!! The cafe is actually not run by the original owners of the cafe that J.K.R. went to. It used to be called Nicholson's, and JKR went there because they gave her free coffee and let her sit inside. Before she published the first book it went out of business and was actually turned into a chinese restaraunt. Now it's been turned back into a cafe, but it isn't owned by the same people which is a same, because I feel like they might have done really well if they would have stayed in business until the books took off... because I have a feeling a lot of Harry Potter fans would love to go there... Even though it isn't the exact cafe it was still amazing to sit inside of it. I felt like I was in the footsteps of greatness. I was just imagining that she walked around this area and came here everyday. It was really cool.
This is the plaque outside of the cafe. This was the only indication that JKR had ever been inside the cafe... which surprised me. I was expecting them to advertise it more, but I guess it's mostly for locals not tourist. Just a warning for anyone that might want to go to this cafe... there is a FAKE cafe in Edinburgh that advertises in HUGE writing across it's front window that it is the birth place of Harry Potter. JKR has said that that was NOT the place that she wrote the book, and the city is actually in the process of trying to make the cafe take down the claim. I saw a LOT of people posing outside of the cafe and taking pictures and going inside of it. So don't be taken in! The real place is on Chambers and Infirmary St. past Subway and Blackwells... if you walk down South Bridge you'll walk right into it!
Mmm... this was the delicous hot chocolate that I had i
n the building. It was a cold rainy day when I walked through town to find this cafe. Had it not been the cafe that JKR wrote HP in... I might not have gone, but I was determined to see it! Anyways... this hot chocolate was very well received by me. I was really happy to sip it and look around the place.
Not gonna lie... it was a little bit of a strange place. The decor really through me off. It wasn't the atmosphere I was expecting, but I'm sure that it's changed a lot since JKR wrote the first HP book. And I guess I had all kinds of preceived notions about what this place was going to be like in my mind. Trust me I have thought long and hard about this place before I ever even considered going to Edinburgh. In 10th grade I wrote a paper on JKR and how impressive she was, because she came from so little and did so well. I've thought about a young poor girl with a young child sitting in a cafe writing a story that she had no idea would be so successful. I always pictured that cafe, and when I was here I knew I had to see it. I wasn't sure what to expect I thought that they would surely advertise and try to capalize off the the HP connection... I even half expected them to have Harry Potter named drinks and food... I was slightly disappointed when the only reference they made to it was that small plaque outside. It had regular named drinks, and it was just a strange building over... Despite it all though I still felt a Harry Potter connection. Like I said before I felt like I was in the foot steps of greatness, and even though the cafe wasn't what I expected I could still picture it all... and that was awesome.
Moving on from Harry Potter (Yes I know it doesn't seem possible does it??) there is another famous lady that is from Edinburgh. St. Maragret. I never knew anything about her until I came to Scotland, and I had to write a paper on how she influenced Scotland for my Celtic Scotland class. I decided to write my paper on St. Maragret before I left for my trip. St. Maragret was also a Queen of Scotland, and she was one of the most treasured queen's in Scotland's history. Her era was known as the Golden Times in Scotland, and I had just gotten done writing a paper on why she was influential and amazing basically... so when I heard that Edinburgh Castle had a chapel dedicated to St. Maragret I knew that I had to go to the castle and see it. My tour guide pointed at the chapel from the bottom of the hill, and when he pointed I thought that he was referencing this building behind me. Well... that was actually the Scottish War Memorial...
This was St. Maragret's Chapel. I was so confused, and shocked. You have to realize that I have been traveling Europe and I've been seeing a lot Saints churches. Some like St. Peter's and St. Mark's have been glorious... others more modest. St. Maragrets? I was shocked. It was tiny. It could only fit about 15 people inside. I saw the sign out in front of it, and then I asked a worker to confirm that this was actually her chapel.... and yes it was.
This is the main decoration in the chapel. And then there were about 5 small windows around the chapel just like the one in the picture with stained glass. This chapel pretty much set the tone for the rest of my visit to Edinburgh Castle. I went to visit the Scottish Crown Jewels afterwards, and after having seen the English Crown Jewels in London... the Scottish ones were pretty disappointing. There were only three pieces compared to the massive collection in London. I wouldn't recommend going to Edinburgh Castle. There are a lot of other castles that are far more interesting, and a lot more beautiful. I had been to the Sun Palace in France a few days before, and after having seen the magificance of that palace Edinburgh Castle seemed very plain to me. There were very few decorations, and I felt like I was in a less grand verison of the Tower of London. If someone is heading to Edinburgh I would not commend seeing the castle they don't have student discounts and I personally don't think it's worth the money.
The Radison Hotel chain choose this spot to build a new hotel on in 1990. It's a great location in Edinburgh, and I'm sure they they would be able to charge top dollar for a room inside of it. They even give you complimentary ropes to use incase a fire breaks out... Yes. Since it has been built in 1990 the fire station has been called to the site 363 times. Apparently, in 1671 a man was burned at the stake on this ground, and since then every building on the site has burnt to the ground. Fires just randomly start, and they think that it is haunted.
Hard Rock!! Woohoo!! I ate at this one. :) I'll be making my impressive Hard Rock Cafe blog with my pictures of Hard Rock's throughout the world after I visit the one in Dublin!! :)
Now what is the cooky building you ask? Scottish Parliment? Why yes.. .it is... Intersting design isn't it?? Originally it was supposed to cost 40 million pounds. In the end it ended up costing 450 million pounds! When the government was halfway through with the project 9/11 occured, and the Scottish government decided that the building they were working on was not secure enough from attacks. So they began tearing down parts, reinforcing others... and it ended up getting expensive! They made put up all kinds of blockades so that a terrorist couldn't drive into the building with explosives. If someone crashed through the concrete posts on the outside that flips a trigger and spikes will shoot up out of the ground and impale the car. Yep. They aren't messing around here! My Harry Potter friend tour guide commented that he thought this building was worth every penny they had to pay for it, because if you and your family was inside of it while there was an attack you would be perfectly fine inside of it. Another tour guide that I had was very bitter about it, and it was obvious that he didn't approve of how much the government spent on the building. He also didn't like the fact that they used a Spanish architect to build it... even though apparently every part of the building represents something Scottish. Do you notice the black things next to the windows? My tour guide asked us what we thought it was... he said that most women think that it looks like a hair dryer or upside down shoe, and that most men thinks that it looks like a hammer or a tool. In reality it's a symbol that the Scottish government has it's curtains open for the Scottish people to look inside the building. I thought it was a really strange funny looking building, but I'm sure they have their reasons... :) Hope that you enjoyed the tour of Edinburgh!
