Walking Tour of Edinburgh

I woke up early and found a local coffee shop to have breakfast. When the coffee came out all I could think of was:

Excuse me, I think I ordered the LARGE cappuccino!

cappuccino

By the way, the Scottish quotes from the movie "So I Married and Ax Murder" have been in my head ALL day. It's just too funny. Anyway, as I took a sip the coffee just melted in my mouth. Seriously, best cup of coffee in Europe so far! Soooooo good! Then all I could think of was, "You did! Congratulations! World's Best Cup of Coffee! Great job everybody! It's great to be here!" Okay, that was an "Elf" quote. You know I'm in my creative mind-set if I start referencing movies into my daily life. Anyway! I took some time at the coffee shop to do a little trip planning. After, I decided to go on a free tour of Edinburgh. They have these trips in every major European city that are completely run on tips. They are awesome! They don't have this in the US, but they are planning on bringing it over. It's a great idea!!

The tour was too expansive to go into detail, but I'll let the photos do the talking:

J.K. Rowling's Window

This is the cafe' where J.K. Rowling sat to write the first Harry Potter book. The view of the window overlooks 3 things: (1) Edinburgh Castle (It's the castle in the background of the "Spooky Graveyard" photo I took yesterday). In Harry Potter it inspired the Floating Castle or the Moving Castle. (2) Grayfriers Kirkyard (The "Spooky Graveyard I visited yesterday) were J.K. Rowling would walk around and use parts of names from the headstones to put in her books. I found Moodie and McGonagall, but I heard that Tom Riddle was there too. I had to go back at night to search for all the names. It was dark, windy, cold, and.....creepy. Very very dark. There I am in this dark spooky graveyard and taking pictures of random headstones (I was given a rough idea of where they were) to find the Harry Potter ones. I had to use my flash on my camera to provide me with some light. Then I would loose my night-vision and have to wait until I got it back. It was spooky! They also have a tomb that is the home of the most wildly reported poltergeist in Scotland. It's the tomb of Sir. George Mackenzie. I walked up and took a picture of inside the tomb. I seriously felt a chill in that graveyard and it wasn't the wind. (3) George Heriot's School which is a school that Hogwarts was modeled after.

Tomb of Sir. George Mackenzie

George Heriot's School from Graveyard

After the tour, a group of us headed to a pub for and early dinner. I sat with a family from London. Oh, and kids can be in the bars over here until the evening, It's crazy. Also, since they drive on the other side of the road here it is weird when there is a one-way street and a car pulls up and a young kid jumps out of the driver's side door. But then I remember that the staring wheel is on the other side of the car. It trips me out every time!!!! Anyway, we had some good conservation and I got to talk with people from all over.

This same group that was running the free tours were also running a Pub Crawl. I looked more into it and decided that it would be better than the one in Dublin. Plus, several people from the tour signed up and I knew there were cool. The pub crawl went to 5 or 6 different pubs in the Old Town area and one club. The pubs were all different and we got free drinks at each one. There must have been about 25-30 on the crawl. I met most of them through the course of the night. I met one girl from Palo Alto and one from Willow Glen. There was one guy there who was from Mountain View as well. Also, there was a big group from Oregon that were all in a study abroad program which was cool. I met a lot of great people. One in particular was Camila who was from Brazil. We got talking and we both found-out that we would be going to the Highlands the following day non the same tour. (FYI: I booked a bus tour of the highlands since it was the most efficient way to see much of Scotland instead of just going to one town and hanging out for the day). Camila tried to teach me some Portuguese, but I had a hard time and she'd get frustrated with me. Camila was very chill and just a joy to hangout with.....she would also laugh at all my jokes even though I don't think she understood most of them. The other weird thing was that I decided to spend my last two days in the UK back in London so earlier today I booked my cheap flight. Well, Camila is going to London this weekend as well. On Monday I'll meet up with Jeff in Nuremberg and Camila is moving to Germany to a town really close to Nuremberg. Crazy happenstance!!!! I doubt we'll hook-up in London or Germany, but it would be fun!

Me and Camila

Anyway, it was a great time until we got to the club. The club was loud, I wasn't dress very nice, and by this time many people had too much to drink. Also, I swear (Camila disagrees) that there was a big group of transsexuals there. Camila said that they were models and I said, "Maybe, but they're transsexual models". They were transsexuals. Anyway, thankful we decided to go back to another bar that we were at earlier where it was quieter. I hate clubs! Poor Camila had a little much to drink and had trouble walking down the stairs so I had to help her all the way down. We got to the last bar and talked some more. By this time the group was down to about 6-7 people. I said, "I got to be up in 4-hours so I need to call it a night". Camila went with me and I saw that she got a cab back to her hostel. I walked back the 4 blocks to my hostel and fell asleep before my head hit the pillow.