May 8, 2017 – May 14, 2017

Bear with me, this is a long one…

When Tyler and I first moved to Amsterdam, we had many friends and family members promise to visit. But the person who was probably the most excited was my little sister Mallory. So when we were home over Christmas, we started seriously talking about planning her trip. She has a love for all things English, so it only seemed natural that the UK would be her top destination. We decided to spend a week in Edinburgh and London.

Edinburgh
Where everything is a castle

The first thing we noticed as we drove away from the airport was that everything in Edinburgh looked like a castle. The buildings were very old and grand. Once we reached the city, however, we could definitely tell which building was the real castle. The castle sits at the top of the Royal Mile and is basically up on a hill at the top of the city. It is eye catching and very majestic.

On our first day in Edinburgh we arrived around dinnertime and didn’t have much of an itinerary since we knew the next two days there would be full of sight seeing. At the suggestion of our Hotel, the Hilton Carlton (which I highly recommend), we went to the New Town to check out the local pub scene before dining at the Mussel Inn. We enjoyed our buckets of 30 mussels each and hit up a cute cocktail bar called The Rosehip. We hit the hay pretty early that night in order to wake up early and refreshed the next morning.

Starting to explore any new city by joining the free walking tour is my preferred way of getting my bearings while also learning a little bit about the history. So we signed up for a Sandeman’s Tour and had Paula as our tour guide. Out of all of the free walking tours I have been on, this was hands down the best (especially coming off Bucharest where we only made it to stop 2 of the tour). I think it helped that Edinburgh is just so fascinating and there were plenty of things to see. We learned about Scotlands rocky relationship with England, and probably my favorite story was the one of the college kids who in the 1950’s stole back the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey. This stone weighed about 300lbs and they actually broke it when they tried to pick it up. They ended up getting away with it and buried it in a field somewhere between their final destination and London because the border patrol had been notified that the stone was missing. When they went back to get it, a band of gypsies had settled on the spot where it was buried and good thing the gypsies were Irish and wanted to stick it to England, because they helped the boys get the stone back to Glasgow. Anyway, England ended up taking the stone back and only recently in 1996 presented Scotland with the stone for good. I always love a good tale about mischievous college boys.

The Last Drop Pub located next to the square where hangings used to take place. The convicted felons would have their last drink here.

The other part of the walking tour where I fan-girl’d hard was when we went to the Greyfriars Kirkyard, a graveyard where J.K. Rowling was inspired to write Harry Potter. In Edinburgh it’s totally normal to hang out in graveyards, in fact we saw plenty of people on their lunch breaks enjoying the sunshine and eating their sandwiches in the graveyard as well as a group of boys playing frisbee. Anyway, so J.K. liked to go to this cemetery where there is a prestigious boarding school separated into four houses on one side and a castle on top of a hill on the other side. The school even used to take in orphaned little boys. Being there, I could see how she was inspired to write a book about a castle school with four houses. Not to mention, she got the names of characters from some of the tombstones. We saw the tombstone of a William McGonnagel and the infamous Tom Riddle. Don’t worry, he’s safely buried six feet under – we saw the grave.

I wasn’t sure the Edinburgh could get much better than the tour, especially since we had pretty much seen the whole city, but I was wrong. Afterwards, we did the strenuous hike from the Palace of Holyrood to the top of Arthur’s Seat. A friend who had been recently told me to make sure to wear tennis shoes, but I’m not sure that even prepared me for how hard the hike actually was. It was pretty much straight up hill and pretty rocky. Not going to lie I did fall once coming down (or twice). However, it was a good workout and the views from the top were incredible. We probably spent 45 minutes hiking to the top, an hour enjoying the views, and 15 minutes making our descent. It really helped that it was an absolutely beautiful day, warm and sunny and we were able to relax at the top. I have had friends who hiked to the top only to be greeted by thick fog and no views. If you are traveling to Edinburgh anytime soon, this would be my top recommendation.

Started from the bottom…

Now we here!

We opted for some Scottish food for dinner that night, and I convinced Mallory that we should get the vegetarian haggis so that I could enjoy some. From my understanding, haggis is basically all of the leftover parts of a pig, wrapped in the pigs stomach with some spices and vegetables. No clue as to what is in the vegetarian haggis, but we were assured it tasted similar. Not going to lie, I wasn’t the biggest haggis fan, although I’m pretty sure my husband would have loved it if he were there. After dinner, we went to the fancy bar at the G&V Royal Mile hotel called Epicurean, where we proceeded to befriend the older Russian couple sitting beside us as well as the younger Italian bartender. We ended up drinking our first taste of Scotch at this bar and even had a tequila shot while exchanging travel tales with the group. It is always interesting the type of people you meet at a bar.

On our last full day in Edinburgh, we decided to do a proper tour of the Edinburgh Castle. It was really interesting to tour the ground and see the castle prisons, the chapel, the cannons, and most importantly the crown jewels with the Stone of Destiny. After hearing the story about the stone, I was intrigued to see if in real life as well as the jewels. After waiting in line for 30 minutes in crowded narrow hallways we finally approached the room where all the action is. It was very underwhelming. Basically, just a crown, a scepter, and a big stone with handles that looks like thousands of other stones that I’ve seen. Regardless, I had never seen “crown jewels” before and I kind of liked it.

We wandered around the castle for a while soaking it all in and reading about what life was like when the castle was fully operational. After the castle, because we hadn’t gotten enough of HP, we went to the cafe that J.K. Rowling is said to have written parts of Harry Potter. The bathroom was really cool because people have covered the walls in messages to Harry.

Dinner that night was at a quaint little place called Lovage at which we were the only patrons by the end of dinner. I am not sure why as it was definitely one of my favorite meals of the whole trip.

We definitely enjoyed our stay in Edinburgh, but we were also excited to head to London.

London
God save the Queen

Having already been to London, I was not as excited about heading here as I had been about Edinburgh. However, we ended up doing a few totally different things than I did the time before and it seemed almost like a new / different city.

We took the train from Edinburgh to London, which might have been one of Mallory’s favorite parts as we passed through the quaint, local villages. Upon arriving in London, we wandered through SoHo and Hyde park before stopping to see Kensington Palace, otherwise known as home of Prince William & Princess Kate. Sadly, no George or Charlotte present. Outside of the massive palace is a reflecting pool teaming with birds and swans.

We walked around Hyde park some more and then went to dinner at a sushi place in SoHo.

The next morning, we continued our search for the Royals to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guards. The last time we were in London the guards did not change, so I was particularly excited to witness this. It appears that the rest of London was just as excited as I was, because the place was a mad house. We ended up not getting very close to the palace, which in hind sight was probably a good thing since there was an incident and the police evacuated everyone who was on the left side of the palace. I know if I would have gotten there an hour early just to be evacuated before the changing actually took place, I would have been furious. Nevertheless, we were able to see some of the guards and horses and it was pretty neat. The whole process lasts around an hour, but we didn’t stay long since it was raining and there were too many umbrellas.

Probably my favorite thing that we did that day though was walk around St. James Park. It was gorgeous and all of the flowers were in bloom.

After we’d had our nature fill we visited Big Ben, the Eye, and Westminster Abbey.

We ended the afternoon at Old Spitalfields Market, but first we got lost and ended up on a really sketchy street where we were definitely the only people who spoke English. I guess I should learn to not rely so much on google maps. But we did see some pretty cool art at Spitalfields and we had great food from the trucks.

Although at this point we were approaching the end of our trip, I was very excited for Tyler to join us and do some of the planning. He had the whole day planned out for us, starting with a tour of the Tower of London, followed by a self-made pub crawl.

I really enjoyed touring the Tower of London. We arrived early enough that it wasn’t insanely crowded, and we were actually able to see the crown jewels without waiting in line for too long. I must say that the crown jewels of London are waaayyyyy more extravagant that the ones in Edinburgh. Too bad they don’t let you take pictures. We walked around the Tower for a while with a tour group and then on our own to see the prison and the views from the top of the towers.

After we’d had enough of the Tower of London and the London Bridge, we went to get some Fish and Chips and started on Tyler’s list of pubs (see my ranking in parenthesis, with 1 being the best):

• The Anchor Bankside (5)
• Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese (1)
• The Old Bank of England (4)
• The Churchill Arms (3)
• The Victoria (2)

We also ate dinner at the Victoria and it was absolutely delicious.

I had such a great time in Edinburgh and London with my sister and can’t wait for her to come visit again! I think she feels the same way since she was talking about how she would love to move to the UK 🙂