I’ve been looking forward to going to Edinburgh for a very long time so I was irritated when I woke up and still felt like the Walking Dead. With the right amount of medication I thought I’d be able to enjoy the day, but not the flight. The flight was terrible on my sinuses and I thought my eyeball might pop out of my head from the pressure. It was bad.
Luckily, Edinburgh made me feel a lot better. As soon as we touched down in Scotland I felt energized. The view from our bus was like nothing I’ve ever seen. Mountains behind rolling green fields. The cities architecture looked very classical. When we got to our apartment I was blown away by how nice the location was. We were directly under the castle and right around the corner from Diagon Alley. The hotel was by far the nicest one we stayed at. The rooms had maps on the walls that helped us plan our day.
The Edinburgh Castle was the coolest thing I saw up to this point. The fortress towers over Old Town and gives you a breathtaking view of the rest of Edinburgh. You can imagine that it would have been quite difficult to attack the fortress due to the elevation. Inside the castle they have recreated rooms where they would have kept prisoners, this was easily my favorite exhibit in the castle. Compared to what we saw at the London Tower the Scottish crown jewels weren’t very impressive.
Finally we began our walking tour down the mile. Our tour guide was exactly what I thought a native Scottish man would be like (I think we later found out he wasn’t born in Scotland). I struggled to hear most of what the guide was saying on the busy streets, especially considering I was congested. One thing I did hear him say was that any new buildings much match the surrounding architecture, which is possibly the most genius way of conserving culture I can imagine.
Finally we went to dinner and I felt worse than ever. I left every 30 seconds to blow my nose or have a coughing fit until I decided it was best to just excuse myself and go back to my hotel room and rest.