Edinburgh and Highland's Bus Tour

This past weekend was probably one of the busiest weekends I've ever had, but also a really good one! After class on Friday Julie, Hanna and I got on a train to Edinburgh. We only had about 45 minutes from when our class was over to get to the station, so it was kind of an adventure but we made it there ok! The ride took a while and I slept most of it, but the latter part of it we were riding by the ocean so it was really pretty. When we got to Edinburgh we met Justin and then walked through the rain to our hostel which was REALLY nice. We were all starving so we walked up the road and found this really random Italian restaurant. We were the only people there and they were playing like 3 year old weird American pop music... so it was a pretty surreal experience.
The next day Justin and I had to be checked out by 10 so we all woke up really early and went to Edinburgh castle. I had really wanted to go because when I was here for the Fringe I never got to go, so I was pretty excited. It was cool but I wish it had been cooler. It's a pretty functioning facility because it's been in use up till the 50's/60's as a prison during various wars... and other things. So a lot of the castley aspects of it are no longer in existence. The parts that did still exist they had filled with these creepy mannequins that seemed like they were going to come alive. So it was a cool place, but they sort of tried too hard with it. There were two parts of it that I did really enjoy though. The Scottish National War Monument was really beautiful. It's a WWI memorial placed in an old Cathedral with really beautiful carvings, stained glass and sculptures. There were also books full of all the peoples names who served and where and what years. It was just really pretty and peaceful and felt really appropriate, somehow. The other place I really liked was St. Margaret's Chapel, which was this TINY little chapel dedicated to Queen Margaret (...no clue who she is) when she was dying, and it had a really pretty little altar and stained glass. We couldn't actually get in the first time we were there because there was a baptism, so it's kind of cool that its actually a functioning place as opposed to a tourist attraction. (Double standard-- I like that it's still used but I didn't like how they sort of disneyfied things)
Afterwards we went and had a really long lunch. First we went to the Elephant House where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter and then next door to this Italian restaurant that had really good deserts. Afterwards we started down the Royal Mile and stopped in at St. Giles Cathedral. I wish I could have taken pictures inside because it's such a cool old church, I've never seen one quite like it. It had all these segments of vaulted ceilings and niches with different things in them. My favorite part was Thistle Chapel which is a little chapel off to the side with all of these incredibly intricate and ornate woodcarvings on the seats of mythical creatures and animals. Afterwards we walked all the way down to the other end of the Royal Mile to the Palace of Holyroodhouse. It's a really beautiful place, but I got annoyed with the audio tour pretty quickly because I didn't really care too much about the Queen's place settings. But Mary Queen of Scott's apartments were really cool and the stories the audio tour told about those were quite interesting. I also really loved walking through the ruins of the Abbey outside and the grounds. It's just a really beautiful and scenic place.
After that we walked back up the Royal Mile and tried to kill some time before we went on our ghost tour/walk thing. We went on a "ghosts and ghouls" tour of the city's underground vaults where the poor lived and people with the plague were placed. First we walked around above ground for a while and heard ghost stories and then we went underground and heard a few stories and then accounts of peoples experiences in the vaults with "ghosts". I was actually terrified down there, each room had its own feel and the last one we were in was supposed to be haunted by this ghost called Mr. Boots who wears knee length leather boots, has no eyes and smells like whiskey. The room was just really cold and in the middle of the guide's story there was this scary rattling from the corner, which looked like it scared her too. So all in all it was just a really unsettling experience. Of course me being the nerd that I am, I want to go back some day and do a more historical tour of the vaults because I think they're really interesting and want to learn more about how they were used.
After the tour Justin and I ran back to the hostel and then ran to the train station to take the train back to St. Andrews to go on the Highlands Bus tour the next day. The next morning we got on the bus at 8:30 and drove through some really pretty scenery before getting to the Wallace Monument... conveniently located at the top of a really steep hill. So we climbed the hill and our tour guide told us the "True Story of William Wallace" vs. The Braveheart version, which was pretty cool. There was a really beautiful view of the Stirling region as well as Stirling Castle, and the monument itself was pretty impressive. Next we went to Doune Castle where all of Monty Python and the Holy Grail was filmed. Which was, again, in a beautiful area and we walked around there for a bit. Next we stopped off at this weird place onthe side of the road who's only claim to fame was having a Highland Bull named Hamish that they've turned into a franchise and sell t-shirts and stuff for. So we stopped there for a while and took pictures of Hamish. Then we went to Lock Katrine which was really beautiful, drove to the village of Aberfoyle and ate. We drove through Trossachs National Park and heard the story of Rob Roy and then stopped at Loch Lomond-- again very pretty, and then headed back to St. Andrews.
So a very full weekend, but totally worth it. I slept until 2 today to recover! Hopefully I'll have more to tell you soon, until then I've just updated pictures!