We left Liverpool at 6:50am and headed on our way to Edinburgh! We arrived in Edinburgh about 10:30am and headed on our way to see what we could find. The first place we stopped was The Elephant House Coffee shop. This is the place where JK Rowling first came up with and wrote Harry Potter. We had a wonderful brunch, then headed back out to explore the city.
Harry Potter birthplace!
The Elephant House
My wonderful brunch of ham and cheese quiche and a side salad with a creamy dressing. It was very good!
After we had brunch, we went to this cemetery behind the cafe where JK Rowling found names for her Harry Potter books. We walked around for 30 minutes and had no luck finding them. I am not going to lie I was very disappointed. As we were leaving the cemetery though, we were stopped by an older gentleman. I believe his name was Wallace and he was a retired historian and a Desert Storm vet. Wallace was wonderful and proceded to walk us around the cemetery for over an hour and told us the history of various parts of the cemetery and we even got to the "Harry Potter" tombstones. Wallace told us there were more tombstones that she had based her characters on, but people have come into the cemetery late at night and knocked them over. He told us that in a few years, JK Rowling plans on paying and having those tombstones replaced.
The names that inspired Professor McGonagall.
The name that inspired Tom Riddle (Lord Voldemort).
In the cemetery, there were also people buried in the walls of the church. Wallace told us that this was the highest honor anyone could received and that's why they were buried there. He also said this is what started flowers for weddings, ceremonies, etc. in the church because the smell would become so bad. The church was also painted gold which has some history behind it as well. The color gold symbolized rebellion against the King. This also started the idea of freedom of choice. This is also the time that slaves were being taken to various parts of the world including the US. That freedom of choice is also in our Constitution and ties back to this church. I thought that was super cool!
After our tour of the cemetery, we checked into our hostel and headed out to explore Liverpool. While we were in Edinburgh, there was a ship that was being retired so there were all these sailors from all over the world. The sailors in the picture below are from Australia and were kind enough to pose for a picture with my travel group!
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| Edinburgh Castle! |
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| Fish and chips for dinner! |
After dinner we decided to go on a City of the Dead Tour which was an underground tour of Scotland! On this tour we went into the undergrounds of Scotland into chambers where they kept prisoners during the 1800's. I am not going to lie, it was a little creepy. It was pitch black and there were stalagmites forming on the top of the ceilings and would scare the heck out of you when one would fall on you. At the very end though, someone jumped out and scared us and I literally fell to the ground I was so scared. Haha. Thankfully I have great friends who helped me up and laughed at me. After the tour we went to a pub, then went to bed to get ready for another great day in Scotland.
We woke up Saturday morning originally planning to go to Glasgow, but we decided we were very tired and decided to stay in Edinburgh for another day. The weather was not as nice as it was on Friday and it basically poured the whole day. We decided then to go to the National Museum of Scotland, which was great because it was free! This is the museum that has the cloned sheep Dolly, which was very cool to see! After the muesuem, we had lunch, then made our way back to the train station to head back to Liverpool! I could not have asked for a better weekend in Scotland! My group had a wonderful adventure, and I cannot wait to see what we do in the upcoming weeks. Cheers until next time!
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| The views were absolutely breathtaking. |
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