Last trip with the SEP girls, dearest Yinghong and Huoyfen up north of the UK! Was really excited about this because at this point I had been hanging around London for about a month, and as much as I love London it's always nice to get out and see something different -plus it was to be our last trip out of London! Although rains were forecasted over Edinburgh for the 3 days we were to be there, I very optimistically packed in a pair of shorts (come on, it's supposed to be SUMMER) -and as you will discover later, my optimism was pretty much misplaced. Darn.
Day 1
So on Monday morning we started off our journey from Kings Cross Station, where I got away with using Pris's rail card yay! Lucky for me they checked YH's first so I guess they didn't bother checking very closely if my face matched the picture on the card (either that or all Asians do look the same haha). Hurrah.
After a 4+ hour journey, we pull into Edinburgh's Waverley railway station, climb up the stairs and emerge into the streets of Edinburgh. First impression: Edinburgh is gorgeous - it feels somewhat like a fairytale or that I've been transported a few centuries back in time as the sights of the Old Town meet your eyes. I'm going to let some pictures do the talking here (:
View of the Old Town -whilst ascending Calton Hill
The Royal Mile -the main road in Edinburgh's Old Town which has the Edinburgh castle on one end of it and a Palace on the other endYepp so after getting out of the train station we make our way to our hostel, where we find our very nice hostel-owner slightly frazzled as he says he is way behind schedule in cleaning up the rooms and making our beds as he has been trying to fix one of the toilets. Heh. He still takes the time to sit us down and tell us more about Edinburgh, making markings on a map with regards to where to eat, and what to see. So we put our bags down and excitedly take our first step out of the hostel, all ready to see what Edinburgh has to offer (okay lah also mostly to fill our empty stomachs), and...
it starts to rain. And this is no light London shower, this is RAIN -for real. And it's COLD. I guess the people of Edinburgh are pretty used to it because some of them are still walking around without umbrellas despite it being the type of rain that makes one gets utterly drenched. Raah. We make it to our lunch destination after a walk that takes us through picturesque Edinburgh (and in the process discovering how Edinburgh is VERY HILLY -NUS hills are puny compared to the differences in elevation in Edinburgh).
So anyway after a nice lunch, it is still raining and we decide to check the castle out, only to discover that by then it's about an hour before it closes so we're not too sure if we should rush it. So we make our way down the Royal Mile, ducking into random places to seek shelter. The rain lets up after a while, thank goodness.
We decide to climb Calton Hill, as it seemed like there were pretty interesting things at the top to look at. On the way up, we see...
Loads of stairs,
A view of the Old Town and the train tracks leading into the Waverley Station,
and gorgeous paths lined with ROCKS (Scotland is a geological heaven) (:
it starts to rain. And this is no light London shower, this is RAIN -for real. And it's COLD. I guess the people of Edinburgh are pretty used to it because some of them are still walking around without umbrellas despite it being the type of rain that makes one gets utterly drenched. Raah. We make it to our lunch destination after a walk that takes us through picturesque Edinburgh (and in the process discovering how Edinburgh is VERY HILLY -NUS hills are puny compared to the differences in elevation in Edinburgh).
So anyway after a nice lunch, it is still raining and we decide to check the castle out, only to discover that by then it's about an hour before it closes so we're not too sure if we should rush it. So we make our way down the Royal Mile, ducking into random places to seek shelter. The rain lets up after a while, thank goodness.
We decide to climb Calton Hill, as it seemed like there were pretty interesting things at the top to look at. On the way up, we see...
Loads of stairs,A view of the Old Town and the train tracks leading into the Waverley Station,and gorgeous paths lined with ROCKS (Scotland is a geological heaven) (:And this is what we see right at the top:
An acropolis that is an unfinished monument meant to be a memorial to those who had died in the Napoleonic Wars (If I said that this is Rome or GreeceI bet nobody would know the difference. Haha.),
Panoramic views of Edinburgh (it's not raining but it was so cold that I put the hood up in an a desperate attempt to keep my face somewhat warm),
Really pretty pathways,
Arthur's Seat -an extinct volcano,
Great expanses of freshly wet grass,
Making for wonderful memories and good photo opportunities (:
An acropolis that is an unfinished monument meant to be a memorial to those who had died in the Napoleonic Wars (If I said that this is Rome or GreeceI bet nobody would know the difference. Haha.),Panoramic views of Edinburgh (it's not raining but it was so cold that I put the hood up in an a desperate attempt to keep my face somewhat warm),Really pretty pathways,Arthur's Seat -an extinct volcano,Great expanses of freshly wet grass,Making for wonderful memories and good photo opportunities (:Day 2
We booked a one-day tour up to the Highlands of Scotland, which I'm really excited about! We unfortunately underestimate the time we need to get to the meeting point and that PLUS the fact that we weren't all that familiar with the paths of Edinburgh and that it involved a crazy uphill climb meant that we were about 5min late, causing the bus to leave late and our guide/driver slightly disgruntled for the rest of the trip -but whatever, this post is not going to be about him. Haha.
The Highlands are GORGEOUS (and thank goodness the weather was perfect) -one day I'm going to take a really long tour of the Highlands -one day is not enough plus we spent most of the day on the bus rather than walking about. Oh wells.
Imagine the glaciers carving these smooth undulating valleys and mountains out eons and eons ago (: It's not all about geology, there's loads of human histories between the Scottish clans -victories, tragedies, human lives revolving around these harsh highlands.
We booked a one-day tour up to the Highlands of Scotland, which I'm really excited about! We unfortunately underestimate the time we need to get to the meeting point and that PLUS the fact that we weren't all that familiar with the paths of Edinburgh and that it involved a crazy uphill climb meant that we were about 5min late, causing the bus to leave late and our guide/driver slightly disgruntled for the rest of the trip -but whatever, this post is not going to be about him. Haha.
The Highlands are GORGEOUS (and thank goodness the weather was perfect) -one day I'm going to take a really long tour of the Highlands -one day is not enough plus we spent most of the day on the bus rather than walking about. Oh wells.
Imagine the glaciers carving these smooth undulating valleys and mountains out eons and eons ago (: It's not all about geology, there's loads of human histories between the Scottish clans -victories, tragedies, human lives revolving around these harsh highlands.The main 'highlight' of the tour would be the Loch Ness (there are many Lochs in the area -pronounce Loch with a choking noise on the 'ch' heh), which is located in a FAULT LINE (Oh gosh this is so geologically&geographically-delicious I could swoon) hee.
Meet Nessie, one of the monsters that supposedly live in the Loch -but the Loch is so deep and huge (supposing it is drained it could hold 10 times the world population) it's not surprising if unknown things lurk below, is it (And Nessie, according to Marshall in HIMYM is a really a 'gentle creature' heh.)?
The infamous Scottish Kilt (I must mention the highly annoying tourist shops all around Edinburgh which sell kilts and insist on blasting some monstrous hybrid of techno-bagpipe music)
The waters of the Loch Ness
The Loch Ness and Us (:
Meet Nessie, one of the monsters that supposedly live in the Loch -but the Loch is so deep and huge (supposing it is drained it could hold 10 times the world population) it's not surprising if unknown things lurk below, is it (And Nessie, according to Marshall in HIMYM is a really a 'gentle creature' heh.)?The infamous Scottish Kilt (I must mention the highly annoying tourist shops all around Edinburgh which sell kilts and insist on blasting some monstrous hybrid of techno-bagpipe music)The waters of the Loch NessThe Loch Ness and Us (:On the Loch Ness -ferry ride! The waters of the Loch Ness are a gorgeous shade of dark blue-ish-green (high peat content in the waters such that sunlight cannot penetrate much through the waters) -Huoyfen and I both thought that it was very therapeutic to just stare into the waters, totally mesmerising. (:
And as we make our way back to our hostel, Edinburgh provides us with yet another picturesque view. (:And so after that we took another 2 hours or so to get back into Edinburgh. Due to the wonders of LONG DAYLIGHT HOURS (Oh how I miss those, now that I'm back here in Singapore) it was still bright at 8+pm and Edinburgh was bathed in a nice pinkish-yellow glow.
And we decided to have dinner at The Elephant House -where JK Rowling wrote some of Harry Potter ahhh. Haha.
And we decided to have dinner at The Elephant House -where JK Rowling wrote some of Harry Potter ahhh. Haha.
Day 3
Our last few hours in Edinburgh, and we were planning to climb up to Arthur's Seat (that extinct Volcano) cos apparently the climb is rather worth it for what you get to see at the top, but unfortunately the skies open up on us again.
Thank goodness for free museums to visit! We visited the Museum of Childhood -which covers more than just the play aspect of a child's life, but was a bit too cluttered for my liking -I much preferred London's V&A's Musuem of Childhood! This goes back I guess to museums as spaces -how would you choose to present something? What I liked about the V&A was that it really was a space where children could play as well, but the Edinburgh's Museum of Childhood was more of things being displayed behind glass cases (well perhaps because of space restrictions as well) which creates a strange atmosphere for things supposed to make kids happy. Afterwards, we visited the People's Story Museum, which was really interesting presenting a cross-section of occupations/ types of people living in Edinburgh, but at some point it was information overload -but you could see how they're really proud of all the different people who've contributed to creating the social life of Edinburgh.
The skies cleared up after lunch but we didn't feel like we had time to climb Arthur's Seat :( So we walked down Princes Street, once again got sucked in by H&M (I'm such an addict!!) and then decided to explore the New Town -which wasn't all that exciting because we felt like we were back in London all of a sudden. We decided to head for this bridge that ran over the Water of Leith (what a nice name for a stream/river) and were greeted by some other really nice views (:
And so we made our way back to our hostel to grab our bags before heading to the train station and making our way back into London. I wish we had more time to spend there , but all the same it was a nice short trip with the two girls and I'll definitely want to go back to Scotland one day (and eat my fill of Scottish biscuits) (:
I just realised that this is the first proper post I've ever done on my trips, and gosh it's TIRING and is likely to be the last proper proper post on trips. The rest are going to be bite-sized! Haha.
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