I apologize ahead of time for the length! We've done a good job of putting off blogging recently.
July 15th - Arriving in Edinburgh from Oslo
We arrived in Edinburgh from Olso in the evening. We got settled into our Airbnb which was right at the edge of an authentic Scottish short course golf course that is free for the public to use (assuming they have clubs and balls), called Bruntsfield Links. We considered spending some time golfing while we were there since you could rent clubs from the nearby Golf Tavern, but we kept ourselves busy with other activities. After settling in, we found a restaurant around the corner called The Apartment, got some dinner, and checked out the
Golf Tavern (which has been a pub since 1456!) for an after dinner pint before calling it a night.
July 16th - Edinburgh Castle
The next morning, we made our way to the Edinburgh castle. It is placed on the top of a big hill in the middle of town which is actually an old, inactive volcano. Since it's placed up so high, it's pretty hard to miss from just about anywhere in town, so we knew that was one of the first things we wanted to do when we saw it walking to our Airbnb from the bus the previous evening. Walking Edinburgh was pretty easy (even with the hills), so we didn't pay for any busses or anything while we were there and just walked everywhere. We spent the morning at the castle and did a guided tour once we were in the castle to learn about some of the history. There were some amazing views from the castle and we had a great day to look out on the city. We also got to see the Scottish Crown Jewels (the second oldest crown in Europe) and taste some whiskey.
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Edinburgh Castle |
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View from Edinburgh Castle |
Once we felt like we'd seen enough, we made our way out of the castle and on to The Royal Mile, one of the main streets through the center of the city, to find some lunch. On our way to lunch, we passed a group of people holding owls on the sidewalk with a crowd around them. I obviously couldn't pass up the chance to hold an owl, so we made a quick pitstop to make friends with Beethoven. We found a good place that had some authentic Scottish food and both got to try haggis (though mine was vegetarian :) ). After filling up, we made our way over to Calton Hill where we found another great view of the city. I read that Edinburgh is sometimes referred to as the Athens of the north because of the monuments that are at the top of Calton Hill, but we didn't get to check out much of it since they are doing some renovations on the museum up there at the moment.
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Me and Beethoven |
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Haggis (and veggie haggis) |
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Calton Hill |
After taking in the views, we came back down to Princess street which is another major road through the city and walked toward the Scott Monument. We had noticed the structure in the skyline and wanted to check it out since it is dark, pointy, and cool-looking. There was a young musical cast doing a performance on the lawn just in front of the monument, so we stopped to listen for a moment before snapping some pictures and making our way back for the evening. We grabbed some groceries and made dinner at our Airbnb before calling it a day. We did a ton of walking and were ready to get some rest.
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Scott Monument |
July 17th - Arthur's Seat
Our next big adventure was climbing Arthur's seat, which is another vent of the same volcano that lies under the Edinburgh castle. Just like the castle, it can be seen from just about anywhere in the city and it's a beautiful grassy green color, which is very inviting and exactly what you'd expect you'd find in Scotland. We packed a few snacks we had bought from our grocery run the night before and hit the trails to climb our way up. We took the quickest route, which meant that it was also the steepest, but after about 20-30 minutes from the base, we were at the top. It was incredibly windy at the top. I was worried I was going to lose my sunglasses or something while we were up there, but we just hung on tight while taking of our photos, and luckily, we didn't lose anything. We found a spot that was a little less windy on our way down to munch on our snacks before finishing our descent. We took the longer way down in order to pass by the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the official residence of the queen in Scotland, and the Scottish Parliament building. This all lies at the other end of the Royal Mile from the castle, so we then took this route into town.
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Top of Arthur's Seat |
Another thing that was on our list for Edinburgh was visiting The Elephant House cafe. This is known as the birthplace of Harry Potter since J.K. Rowling often visited while writing the Harry Potter books. It's not hard to believe it was such an inspiring place to write since there is a great view of the castle out the window along with some great food and drinks. We grabbed a couple drinks and a slice of cake to share. The cafe has embraced the fame while not being overtaken by the Harry Potter theme, but fans have made their mark in the bathroom with notes all over the walls.
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View from The Elephant House |
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Bathroom graffiti |
Following the Harry Potter theme, we next visited Greyfriar's Kirkyard (churchyard) with gravesites which inspired some of the names J.K. Rowling used in the books. We didn't find many, but there are supposed to be several names throughout the area, including Tom Riddle, McGonagall, James and Lily, etc.
July 18th - National Museum
On our last full day we visited the National Museum of Scotland. The museum is free to enter which we really appreciate! We looked around in different rooms including some about fashion, design, natural history, Scottish history, etc. We ended our visit with a trip to the rooftop terrace to check out the skyline. There are so many places in Edinburgh to get a great view and we made sure to go to as many as we could!
After the museum, we did a little shopping around on the Royal Mile before heading over to the Water of Leith walkway. There is a nearby village named Dean Village which has some beautiful buildings along the small river, Water of Leith. The walkway follows along the water and allows for a serene nature experience. We slowly made our way along the river enjoying the scenery while biding our time for our next stop. Since we had a bit more time to kill, we found a cute coffee shop in the neighborhood.
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Dean Village |
Our last stop of the evening was another place we knew we wanted to visit while in Edinburgh. There is a local group that opens pop-up bars in town with different themes, and we wanted to check out the Game of Thrones themed bar,
Blood and Wine. The only chance we had to visit was on Tuesday night since that was the only day they were open while we were in town. They also didn't open until 5pm, so we arrived right on the nose (we also wanted to avoid the crowds for a trivia night they were hosting later). The bar was in the basement of another bar in a couple small rooms, but it was completely decked out with decor that perfectly fit the theme. And of course, the menu was all themed as well. We enjoyed a couple drinks while chatting with some other Game of Thrones fans and watching old episodes. After we had spent enough (or too much) on novelty drinks, we went home for the night.
July 19th - Train to Glasgow
Since we had one more big thing on our list for Edinburgh, we started the day off with some amazing cheesecake at
Artisan Cheesecakes. I had heard about this cheesecake place that made extremely decedent and deluxe cheesecakes, and it happened to be very close to our Airbnb. We got a raspberry lemon slice to share and it was the most amazing cheesecake I've ever had. It was perfectly fluffy and delicious. After filling up on cheesecake for breakfast, we headed to the train station to catch a train to Glasgow.
The train was only about an hour, so we arrived in Glasgow midday. We grabbed some lunch at a cafe just below where we'd be staying before bringing our stuff upstairs. After getting situated, we walked over to the Glasgow Cathedral and Necropolis which were about a 5 minute walk from the Airbnb. We walked through the Cathedral which was different from any of the others that we had been in since it had so many different rooms and levels to it. The alter was also placed in the middle of the church with seats around it on three sides, which is something we hadn't seen in any of the other old cathedrals we have visited.
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Glasgow Cathedral |
The Necropolis was beautiful and old. Situated up on a hill, the headstones and monuments were clearly commemorating some of the major public figures of the past in Glasgow. It was a beautifully unique site perched on the top of a hill behind the cathedral.
On our way back to the Airbnb, we stopped at a brewery called
Drygate Brewing. We passed the large Tennent's brewing facility on our way over and saw that Drygate was snuck in on the edge of their large plot of land. We were curious to figure out whether Drygate and Tennent had a relationship of some sort or if Drygate was somehow being a little thorn in Tennent's side by parking themselves right next door. We hoped for the latter, but learned that they are both owned by a large beer group, which was a bit sad, but we still had some good beers and dinner at the brewery before heading in for the night.
July 20th - Glasgow Sightseeing
We were also able to walk most of the time in Glasgow, so we started our day by walking into the center of town to George Square. We admired some of the statues around and saw the city hall building. Then we walked over to the Duke of Wellington statue. This statue famously wears a traffic cone as a hat and we were not disappointed. We found the duke with his famous hat as well as one for his horse. The tradition started as a practical joke that just stuck due to the tenacity of the people of Glasgow despite the resistance from the local government. It's simply a sentiment to the Scottish sense of humor and something that's clearly not worth fighting considering the lack of success the city has had in the past.
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Duke of Wellington statue |
We didn't have many plans for the city of Glasgow, so we found ourselves wandering through some of the pedestrian streets and enjoying the street musicians and people watching. We attempted to visit "The Lighthouse" in the middle of town for a good view, but it was closed for a private event, so we continued our wandering. Eventually, we were hungry for some lunch and settled on a German-style bier hall. After lunch, we walked over to the People's Palace park and sat by one of the fountains for a bit before heading to a nearby brewery to check out the brews. We visited
WEST brewery and enjoyed watching all the dogs that people had brought in to sit with them while they drank and visited with friends. We went back to our Airbnb and rested a bit before grabbing dinner at a restaurant down the road.
July 21st - West End and Flying to Ireland
We had a very late flight to Dublin, so we checked out of our Airbnb and hit up the west side of town since that was a bit far for us to walk the previous day, but it was on the way to the airport. We found a cute restaurant called Brel for lunch and walked around the University of Glasgow campus a bit. We wandered over to Kelvingrove Park and the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. The museum was free, so we went in for a short while and looked around before we decided we were sick of carrying our bags around. We got an Uber to the airport and found a lounge to hang out in until our late flight. We got some food, wifi, and comfy chairs in there, so we camped out reading and browsing the internet for a while. After a slight flight delay we made it to Dublin!
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Brel |
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Kelvingrove Park |
Just a reminder that the photos in the blog are only a small number of everything we've taken. We have almost 1,000 photos at this point from our trip! If you go back to the main page and click the menu button on the top left you can access our Google Photo library.
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