Edinburgh, Round Two

I wake up a little later on Saturday, but eventually took the bus to Edinburgh, where I met my friend Tessa, who lives there. Though Tessa studies biology at St Andrews, I think she and I are kindred spirits. We meet outside Fraser's department store, and she says, "Unless you want to go shopping, I know a bookshop we could spend all day in." I'm game. We head there, and it's really lovely. As you can see, the books are wall to wall, ceiling to floor, for four rooms. They're all used, all pretty old and worn. Basically, my favorite thing in the world. Rooms of old books. Bliss. We spend a while there. I buy a 1939 edition of some Kipling for £3. It's pretty excellent.

We then pass by Tessa's old secondary school, which is near the shop. It's actually the school Hogwarts was based off, she informs me. There seem to be a fair number of Harry Potter references here in Scotland. We check out the school, called George Heriot's.

She gives me a short tour, as far as we can get in. It's easy to tell how Hogwarts could come out of it: it literally looks like a castle. I can't believe Tessa went to school here for six years. I'm jealous. It's a really beautiful set of buildings. She tells me some fun facts about the school - it has four houses and some legendary trap doors and secret passages, supposedly. There's a chapel and lots of stained glass and towers. In the middle of the courtyard this picture shows, Tessa tells me there's a trap door people say leads to Edinburgh Castle, at the other end of town. Tessa also informs me that Heriot's uniforms include kilts. Awesome.

This whole time, Tessa's been asking me about my holiday so far. When I tell her I've been to Stirling Castle, she says, "Oh, my dad's an archaeologist and excavated part of that." Apparently he helped find parts of Melrose Abbey, as well, and when we get to the National Museum of Scotland, the first thing we see is something her dad found. I'm impressed. The National Museum is free (the public, apparently, has a right to use the museum but not the bus station toilets), and Tessa and I spend a while in there, looking things over. It's cool to be in a museum in Scotland. Lots of the things here you would never find in the States. There are artifacts from the Jacobite rebellions and old highland clan symbols and kilts. It's pretty neat.

Tessa and I then get a milkshake (very different here than they are in the U.S. - more milky and less ice cream-y) at the café across from The Elephant House (the third picture), where J.K. Rowling apparently first began penning Harry Potter. Those books are haunting me here, I swear. The café has a sign on the front window that says "The birthplace of 'Harry Potter'" and lots of people are taking pictures of it.

Tessa has to leave before I do, so she takes the bus back home and I sit at a lovely park (pictured above and to the left) and eat some dinner. I then head back to the Elephant House, which turns out to be a cool café for more reasons than Harry Potter: they let me have some Irish in my coffee. I sit there reading Kipling, before I have to take the bus back. And this near-straight bus ride has no complications. Success.