Wednesday, October 29th Exploring the Medieval City

The girls and I ate breakfast at the Elephant House where JK Rowling first got her inspiration for Harry Potter. It was a really cute little coffee shop and breakfast house. I got a mocha and a bacon and egg biscuit. Afterwards the girls and I bundled back up to head out into the freezing cold and head to Edinburgh Castle. It’s so huge and it was really neat being on the inside of a castle that was really used centuries ago. There was a ton to see once we were passed the main gates and it took us a few hours just to see a few of the rooms and buildings in the Castle. We saw several Scottish war museums, heard a cannon fired, saw the crown jewels, and a few palace rooms.

After that we walked down the Royal Mile, which is basically made up of a bunch of streets that lead straight from the castle to the Holyroodhouse which is a palace. On the way to the Holyroodhouse we stopped and had lunch at a very American restaurant called the Filling Station. It wasn’t as adorable as the Filling Station in Orange but still fun haha. Then we just continued on shopping at all the little shops along the main street. There were tons of Scottish souvenir and kilt shops which were kind of fun to look at. By the time we got to the end we took pictures of the Holyroodhouse palace and then climbed a volcano right next to it as the sun was setting. The top had a gorgeous view of the city and the hike helped warm us up haha. It was so awesome. Honestly even the sky had black clouds in it and looked all medieval…I don’t even usually like dark things this was just something out of a fairy tale or something. The Edinburgh Castle sits on a volcano as well so we could see that and all of the city spires on the buildings from the lookout point. After that we went back to our cupcake place from the first night called chocolatesoup! We had amazing hot chocolate and I got a mint brownie for the next day hahah I think we were all on a crazy sugar overload the whole time. But the U.K. had normal American desserts and we’ve been deprived of those for over 2 months now hahah so we had to make up for lost time!

Our big event of the night was taking an underground ghost tour of the city. It was called Mary King’s close and the whole thing was more suspenseful than scary…Thank goodness! The girls had a crush on our tour guide so they were very into the tour the whole time hahaha. At one point a girl came out and started telling us that she was a witch and she could identify the witches in the room because they were wearing red. And of course I had my big red pea coat on hahah So she pulled me out in front of the whole tour and kept asking if I was a witch and I just kept saying no and laughing. I had to walk a line and she had to poke me with her wand…all kinds of stuff. But eventually I was off the hook. Hannah’s a witch too because she had red on, so the rest of the trip we were making jokes about being witches.

Afterwards I wanted Mexican food, because we’d passed quite a few Mexican restaurants in Scotland. So I got nachos and the girls got quesadillas…simple but good! Edinburgh was absolutely gorgeous but after a week of traveling I was definitely ready to come back to Florence…and even more excited to celebrate HALLOWEEN!
Cheers!