So, I've finally had some free time and a working wi-fi connection, so I figured I'd make a big, long post of what you're REALLY here for.. my pictures. All of these are from my trip to Edinburgh, Scotland during the Fringe Festival for four days.
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| Photos from the train ride up. Cliffs, where puffins may or may not live. |
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| A lighthouse! So cute. |
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| Scottish countryside :) |
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Downtown Edinburgh. The Scot Monument [aka the Gothic Rocket] in the foreground
and Jenner's department store [the oldest department store in the UK] in the back. |
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| DELICIOUS [and much needed] first meal; a cream cheese & ham croissant, mixed 'leaves' and crisps. |
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| Grassmarket, a cute market and restaurant area situated in the shadow of the castle. |
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| Cutest carved owl ever.. A bold, but true, statement. [Note the equally cute pig on the right.] |
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The completely vibrant (to put it nicely ;) crowd of people packed into the Fringe Fest area.
The columns were completely plastered with posters for shows,
which would be covered in completely different posters every 12 hours or so. |
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| Me standing on an overlook of part of the city and Arthur's Seat and the craggs in the background. |
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View of Arthur's Seat from Regent's Park.
There were also three huge stone monuments on this hill that tower over the city. |
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| Another view of Edinburgh and the sea from the top of Regent's Park. |
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The entrance to the castle. There's stadium seating in the corner [the bright blue bit]
because the Scottish Tattoo does bagpipe concerts there nightly. |
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| Entrance to the Edinburgh Castle. |
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View of downtown from the top of the castle.
You can see Prince's Park, the Art Gallery -- it has four Monet's, two da Vinci's, a Botticelli, a Titian and more! --
and the Gothic Rocket in order from left to right. |
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| Looking down on the [mostly Asian] crowd at the castle. :) |
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Climbing up Arthur's Seat.
This was after we had walked a slow, steady incline to the main path up the mountain [pictured here].
The path up consists of a narrow, winding path of stone "steps," which are actually semi-flat stones arranged
loosely in the form of what many people would consider "stairs."
We climbed to the top of the tallest bit of the peak in the top left corner. |
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| Taking a break to breathe/pose for cheesy pictures. |
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| Looking down on the way up the mountain. |
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At the top! Very windy and kind of chilly, but the sun was out off and on
and after sweating my bottle of water out my lower back, the wind was actually much appreciated.
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| Yellow flowers that I was quite fond of, with the valley on top of Arthur's Seat that we had lunch on. |
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Holyrood Palace, the Queen's official residence in Scotland.
Home to the most infamous Queen as well, Mary Queen of Scots.
Her original bed and chamber is all still there,
as well as a plaque to mark the spot where her supposed lover was killed by her husband. |
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Posing stupidly with the little handset tour they give you, which was actually quite concise and informative.
Unfortunately, photos weren't allowed inside the palace, so I just have pictures from the outside. |
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Gorgeous flowers in the garden at Holyrood Palace.
They had hot pink and white flowers like this all over downtown Edinburgh as well. |
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| More from the palace garden. |
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The gorgeous ruins of an abbey which are connected to the palace. It was destroyed during Henry VIII's reign.
I took a lot of pictures in it, but I didn't want to bore you with all of them on here.
You can see more in my Edinburgh album on Facebook. ;) |
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Inside the National Museum of Scotland.
It was a really cool museum, the animal exhibit [pictured here] was especially awesome! And kind of creepy. |
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The best street performer. He was very witty and was an above average juggler and unicyclist.
Definitely the best show we saw at the Fringe! ;) |
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Overall, the weather was fabulous and summery; not to mention very uncharacteristic of Edinburgh, haha. :) I'd definitely recommend climbing Arthur's Seat to everyone, even though it's essentially hell on the way up, the end result is so so worth it. If you scrolled through all the pictures, stopping at a choice few to look at more in depth: C. If you scrolled through the photos, looked at maybe the first 10 and read the captions, plus read the intro and outro: B+. If you read the intro, outro, all the captions and checked out each photo: A!!
I'll be posting in a few days with some photos of my new flat [ !!!!! ], my roommates and the London Center.
Until then,
xx