Kyle Hepp

June 8, 2011

I LOVED Scotland. It is every bit as cool as you imagine it would be and then some. And then some more.

We traveled by train to Edinburgh with Francine and Andre and arrived to a quaint little B&B. The owner was…how do I put this nicely…a bit quirky. Or maybe he was really really awesome and I just had no idea because I couldn’t understand a damn word out of his mouth. Don’t know.

The entire time we were in Edinburgh (pronounced Edin-brrrrrro by real Edinburghians), I kept sighing and saying out loud, “This is so pretty,” or “I think I want to live here.”

Apparently many foreigners have the same idea because the town seemed full of foreign owned businesses. I felt like everywhere we went the people we talked to were of a different nationality — Spanish waiters at a Spanish owned pub, an Arab man trying to sell us (overpriced) bus tours — real Scots were few and far in between. Granted, we were also hanging out in the touristy parts of town doing touristy things, so I’m sure that was a big factor as well.

By now, you’ve probably already seen my Irish jig in Scotland so you know how happy I was on this trip. Last night we got to meet up with some of our favorite people in the world, Anna and Andrew, and we were talking about embarrassing things. I mentioned that I have no shame gene and Andrew instantly replied, “Oh, you mean like the Irish jig video?” HA! What’s embarrassing about that?

Anyway, have a look at the city. See for yourself how incredibly stunning it is. Soon I’ll post about our City of the Dead tour and our trip to the Edinburgh castle (where Mary Queen of Scots lived! I adore Mary Queen of Scots! Who doesn’t?!), as well as some really amazing churches that we visited while there.

I should add that this church actually had the genius idea to start charging if you want to take pictures. SO SMART. If you’ve ever been to Europe, you’ll know that a lot of the churches don’t allow pictures. One of the reasons they do this is because they want to sell you postcards so they assume you’ll buy a postcard if you can’t take your own photo. This church, instead, charges a fee, I think like 2 or 3 pounds if I remember correctly, which allows you to take your own pictures. That’s intelligent. I’d pay the fee every time, but I have yet to buy a postcard at any church.

We were there on a bank holiday weekend in the UK so I think there might have been more tourists than normal. This is on the street called The Royal Mile. What a fancy sounding name.

All over Edinburgh are cool little alleyways that are kind of hidden off of the main drags.

For all you Harry Potter nerds out there, here are JK Rowlings handprints.

I really do heart Scotland. I’m sure some of it had to do with the fact that we were in great company with Francine and Andre. It made traveling even more fun than usual. But, the little that we saw of it made me think that Scotland is a seriously amazing country.