Bag Pipes, and Kilts and Plaid...oh my!

So much to blog and so little time!

Oh Scotland! So, for those of you who didn't know. I have been in Scotland the past 3 days. We stayed in the capital Edinburgh. We left EARLY Monday morning and headed to the Kings Cross Train Station (yes, the same place where Harry caught his bus to Hogwarts). We got on the train and were lucky enough to get a table seat so four of us girls could sit around it, talk and do homework.

We had lots of fun times eating our lunches at 10am, reading Wuthering Heights and jamming to High School Musical (don't judge). It was a little over a 4 hour train ride. Once we got off we immediately heard bagpipes and saw kilts...no lie! We headed to the Hostel, but we couldn't check in yet so we dropped off our stuff...and went shopping!

What do you think? Could I pull it off? ;)

They seriously sold kilts EVERYWHERE! Sadly I didn't buy one, but I was tempted to...ok, maybe not.
We then met up with the group and went to the Edinburgh Castle.
One of our favorite parts were the guards at the castle. It is always so interesting taking pictures with them because they don't smile or even look at the camera, but I always wondering how many pictures they get taken of them a day.
Once we entered the castle we walked around and we were able to get a great view of the whole entire city.
It suddenly became really windy and cold as we were walking around and so we didn't stay there too long. We then decided to get inside to warm up, and so we shopped on what is called the Royal Mile. It is basically like "Main Street". Everything is on it including shops, restauraunts and other fun things.
I kind of just looked around at all the shops. I did find one souviner that I would like to have but I don't think it would fit in my suitcase. Dang it!

We then went out to dinner at a place called "The Filling Station".

It was really good and reminded me of a lot of restraunts back at home. (It was comparable to an Applebees). It was weird though becaus for our water they gave us a pitcher with three straws in it!
We then decided to split a big dessert at a place called "Chocolate Soup". We heard from the directors that it is a favorite of students each year. It was a brownie with ice cream and "chocolate soup" sauce.
It was so rich that it was a good thing that we all split it. Yum! Edinburgh was a little sketchy at night (and we were all so tired) that we didn't stay out too late. Most of us went and hung out at the hostel.

The next morning we had a free day (nope, you didn't hear me wrong). We had no clue what we were going to do and so we decided that we would get up early and head to the coast. We walked to the bus station and after asking everyone at the station where the best place was to go, we jumped on a bus to a beach that was about 1 hour away.
We were so happy once we got there (it was called North Berwick) and it was beautiful!

We then had some fun playing around on the beach...

trying to take jumping pictures...

reenacting movies...

(this is me pretending to be the "Little Mermaid"...if you couldn't tell).
and writing in the sand!

We decided to stay there and get lunch. I went to a little "baguette express" place. It was good...except the chicken was dyed red...strange.

The bus ride home took twice as long...and so we slept!

Once we finally got back to the city we walked around the city a little bit and guess who we found...a bag piper! We had a little jam session with him!
Then for dinner we went somewhere REALLY special...any guesses...
"The Elephant House". This is the cafe where JK Rowling wrote down on a napkin her ideas for Harry Potter and where the book began! How cool. (Now, just to clarify...I am not a Harry Potter freak, though it may seem that way, I just enjoy it and the girls I hang around with are obsessed!!!)

We obviously could not pass up the opportunity to write our own story while we were at the restauraunt.
And so we found a scratch piece of paper and decided to write what we thought JK Rowlings piece of paper/napkin would have looked like. I think we hit it spot on!
We then walked around the city more and found me the most classy dressed boyfriend!
I am then sad to admit that we went to a grave yard where supposedly JK Rowling got the names for some of the characters in her book. We actually found "Tom Riddles" grave, all the Harry Potter obsessives had a hay day! As we walked back we also found some fun grafitti (this reminded me of you Chuck, don't know why).

The next day we got up and it was cold and raining. We were planning as a group to hike up to Arthur's Seat (I will explain later) but because of the weather it was slippery and so they made it optional. Most of us decided we wanted to go anyways.
This is Arthur's Seat. Basically it is a mountian/hill thing. I can't remember why it is called that but it also had significance with Orson Hyde and teaching people in Scotland.

Now, do I look like a hiker or what???
We only made it about 3/4 the way up and then we came back down because we had an appointment with the Scottish Parliament.

There is a member of the Parliament who is LDS and so he showed us around and answered questions that we had. Pretty cool. We even got official tags and everything!
For lunch we ended up going to Tesco (the local Walgreens/Grocery Store) and picked up a sandwhich (P.S. It is weird, they also sell prepackaged waffles and pancakes)and we ate it at Edinburgh University trying to spy on some cute Scottish men...but no luck!

We then caught the long train ride home as we caught up on sleep and homework. It is always good to go away but its just great to be "Home" (which is London for the moment, and it actually feels like home now!)
Whew! What a long post! Until next time!

P.S. For those of you expecting a lot of scenic pictures...we really didn't get out of the city, sadly. But here is one of the city so you can get a feel for it.