Megan and I had barely gotten a taste of adventuring our next trip began. The Thursday after our day in London, we flew from Bristol, UK to Edinburgh, Scotland. Megan and I caught a mid-afternoon flight before the others, since we were finished with class earlier in the day. Once we landed in Edinburgh, we hopped on a bus, which dropped us off around the corner from the hostel. We checked in and decided to walk around a bit to find dinner before the other girls arrived. We happened upon a small cafe down the block called Ryan's, where the food was excellent.
After dinner, we went back to the hostel to try and get some work done while we waited for the rest of the group to arrive. They called just before 10 to let us know they had landed, at which point we relayed the directions to the hostel. Allison, Amanda, Hadley and Katie (who live in the flat below us) arrived half an hour later, and Cae (a friend of Amanda's) came in minutes after. We settled in for the night, happy that everyone had arrived safely.
Friday morning, we woke up bright and early to grab the continental breakfast at the hostel before we set out for the day. By 9 that morning, we were ready to start moving, and we set out for the Edinburgh castle, which was about a 25 minute walk from the hostel. We spent the morning touring the castle and its grounds. My personal favorite was getting to see the crown jewels and the Stone of Destiny. For those who don't know its dubious history, the Stone of Destiny sits under the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey, from where it was stolen. It now resides in Edinburgh after an agreement was reached with the royal family that it will be transported back to London for future coronations.
After a few hours at the castle, we were ready for lunch, so we walked partway down the Royal Mile and turned onto a side street to reach the famous Elephant House. Many authors have discovered the cafe over the years and sat in its back room to write. The most famous of these has been J K Rowling, who penned much of her first Harry Potter novel while sitting near a window overlooking the Edinburgh castle. Her view explains the striking physical similarities between the hill on which the castle sits and the similar position of Hogwarts. We reveled over the cafe's past while we munched on our lunches and took a break from all the walking we had been doing before we got back up on our feet.
Our afternoon started with a trek back up the Royal Mile (in the direction of the castle) to the small Writer's Museum. After we explored the museum, we decided to walk back down the full length of the Royal Mile to the Holyrood Palace, which sits at the other end across the street from the Scottish Parliament building. The Palace serves as home to the royal family if they visit Edinburgh. Having seen the palace, we started to walk back up the mile to take a short break at the hostel. Along the way, we stopped at the Mercat Cross to pick up tickets for our ghost tour that evening. To anyone wondering, the title of this post came was pulled from our discussion of the ghost tour as we walked back to the hostel.
Back at the hostel, half the group decided to shower and take a nap. The rest of us spent some time looking for a good pub or restaurant at which we could eat dinner. Our criteria were fairly specific - we wanted to eat Scottish food, but we also wanted to find somewhere between the hostel and the ghost tour, as well as stay in our budgets. We managed to find "Ghillie Dhu," the one pub that fit all of our criteria, so just before 5, we set off again. The food was delicious, but the service was a little slow for our deadline. We ended up having to sprint up to the Mercat Cross, which wouldn't have been too bad except that most of the journey took us up a huge hill. Even so, we managed to arrive minutes before the tour started at 7.
The ghost tour started with tales of gore from hundreds of years ago in Edinburgh, which slowly became stories of ghosts and hauntings. Although we spent the first 25 minutes above ground, we then moved into vaults hidden under the city's streets. There, our tour guides treated us to your typical ghost stories, successfully frightening all of us to some degree. We joined the tour guides for drinks afterwards, during which they continued the evening's storytelling. At one point, they discussed witch trials, at which point they called up Katie to stand trial! The rest of us pulled out our cameras instantly to catch a shot as Katie faced the "Inquisitor's" questions. At the end, they began to turn down the lights for the last story, which ended in complete darkness. Our whole group reached out for each other, officially terrified. We laughed when the lights came back up, but we had to admit that they had done what they had intended, and we stayed close as we walked back to the hostel for the night. We decided to turn in because we had to be up early for the next leg of our trip: Dublin!
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