I've been a bit busy in the last couple weeks, especially the last weekend for I went to Scotland to visit Mark in Edinburgh!
Some random things I learned about the city:
- the population is only 500 000 people (that's about half of Edmonton to put things into proportion for you), which I found to be very surprising, it feels much larger
- the city is split into Old Town and New Town. The old part is well, really really old. It stems from the Castle, which is perched atop an extinct volcano. New Town was designed by a young architect in 18th century. It was created in order to decrease the volume of people living in Old Town. However, it's modern design was a bit offsetting for some, and it took almost 20 years to fully populate the area.
- J.K. Rowling wrote most of the Harry Potter series while living in Scotland. There are a few cafe's that she frequented and there are now plaques on the outside...just for tourists like me. =)
- Rosslyn Chapel is one of the coolest, and probably the oldest church I've ever visited (I urge you to check out the link for more pictures and stories). It was completed in the 14th century, and in it lies so many different theories, conspiracies, and just plain old stories. One of my favorites is about the creation of the pillars. The story says that the master mason took a trip abroad to get some inspiration for the carvings and while he was gone the apprentice carved a magnificent pillar. The master got so angry he hit the apprentice on the head with his mallet, killing him. As part of his punishment, his face was carved into the opposite pillar so that he must always look at the apprentices work. The chapel is also featured in the famous book and movie The DaVinci Code.
- The town of Roslin (where Rosslyn chapel is) is also the home of The Roslin Institute, which happens to be where Dolly the Sheep was created via cloning techniques.
Edinburgh Castle in the background. In front lies a row of pubs. One of them, Maggie Dicksons, is where I had Haggis for breakfast. The pub itself has quite the story. All the pubs face a central square and that is where the hangings used to occur. Maggie Dickson served her sentence of hanging, but she didn't actually die, so this pub was created in her name.
There was a winter carnival and German Christmas market going on. I found the contrast between the Gothic architecture and the roll-in ferris wheel was quite hilarious.
We had an amazing view of the sunset on the hill where Edinburgh Castle is.
A picture of a picture of Rosslyn Chapel minus all the scaffolding that was present when I visited.
Another picture of a picture to give you an idea of how intricately carved the chapel is. It's quite amazing considering it was competed in 1440. It truly is mindblowing and was probably my favorite part of the whole trip.
So there you go, my trip in a nutshell. A lot of the weekend was spent hanging out with Mark and meeting all of his friends. It was his last weekend in Edinburgh, so we had many goodbye festivities and last things to do. All in all, it was a fabulous weekend and I am so happy I was able to get there in time to have my own personal tour guide.
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