8 April 2011

Today, I woke up early to take a train to... Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland (just in case you didn't know). I left at 8:50am and arrived at 1:40pm. It was a long yet ok journey. Everything went smoothly; the weather was great, the trains were on time, and the scenery was lovely!

It was really easy to find my hotel, the York House Hotel, which is five minutes (walking) from Princes Street, THE shopping street. The hotel is really good, and well situated! I don’t' have a bathroom I my room, but I'm the only person using the one in the corridor, so I can't really complain!

 

Once I was settled in my room, I left for the Castle of Edinburgh. I thought it'd be better to visit it before the weekend and the Easter holiday. And I was right; despite the glorious weather, the castle wasn't too crowded. The admission was £14 (=O) but the visit is worth every penny! Here are a couple of pictures I took when I was in the castle!

After that, I walked along the Royal Mile, the historical street of the city, buzzing with activity. It's SO nice, especially when the sun's shining, like it was today!

I saw High Kirk of St. Giles (the cathedral), inside and out, and it's quite impressive.

Also I went to see the building of the Museum of Scotland, which is modern and quite nice, and doing so, I saw the Elephant, the café where Harry Potter was born! That was cool!

I also went to Grassmarket, a cool street in Edinburgh, and there I found that I could go on a free ghost tour haha. So I had a quick dinner and I then returned to the meeting point, where the tour started at 7pm. The guide was William Burke himself! Or maybe should I say, his ghost! He was actually really funny. The tour lasted about 45 minutes and we heard dreadful – and TRUE!!! – stories about torture and ghosts. I enjoyed it, and I gave the guide a small tip. He asked for some (£5 or £10, which I thought was a bit much, especially since the tour was supposed to be a FREE one... I gave him £2.50, as that was the only change I had and there was absolutely NO WAY I'd given him £10).

Here are two pictures of the ghostly guide!

Then I went back to the hotel, quite tired and listened to music while surfing the Internet on my iPod. Not the fastest, but it actually works pretty well!