Submitted by Charlotte Talis on the 2016 summer session program in London, England sponsored by the Department of Art…
Over a free weekend, I traveled by train to Edinburgh, Scotland. Edinburgh was a much smaller city than we thought it would be, everything was mostly on one main road called The Royal Mile. On the first night we were in Edinburgh, we walked around almost the entire city without realizing it. We got to see the Castle of Edinburgh that sits on a rock formation above the city. It looks like it could slide down the sides of the cliff at any second and crush the shops below it. It is a beautiful architectural collaboration between man and earth. Probably the worst part about going from the large city of London to Edinburgh was the transportation in the city. London’s tube system is so easy I can do it with my eyes closed at this point, but ask me at any point in Scotland where I was in relation to our bed and breakfast, I couldn’t have told you until I found a coffee shop to get wifi. Plus, in London we were spoiled with having unlimited tube and bus passes, but in Edinburgh we had to scrape together bus fare, always in coins, each time we didn’t feel like walking two miles around the city. Yet, we almost always ended up lost on our way to get to where we were going. We had a lot of important places to see on our list and we managed to hit them all thanks to the city being small. We saw the botanical gardens, Mary’s Milk Bar (a famous ice cream shop), the Elephant House Café (where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter) and even the cemetery where Rowling got a lot of the names for her books. The cemetery is said to be the most haunted place in the world and interestingly as soon as we decided to go to it the previously sunny skies opened up and started to shower us with the all too familiar UK rain. Edinburgh has a lot more old buildings and churches mixed into everyday life than London does. Overall, Scotland is an incredibly beautiful place and Edinburgh is overflowing with history and everything from ghosts to seagulls, but I am excited to get back to our normal schedule in London.
