A Sunny Sunday in Scotland

I signed up for the Edinburgh half-marathon a couple of months back, but had to stop training due to shin splints.  Jess was still running it, though, so I decided to tag along anyway and just enjoy a day in Edinburgh.
There was some major construction on the rail, so we had to take a very roundabout way of getting there.  A usual train ride to Edinburgh will take about 2 and a half hours, but ours took about 6 from start to finish.  One of our connecting trains got cancelled because it had collided with cattle earlier in the day and needed some repairs done.  Once we finally arrived, we checked into our hostel, Royal Mile Backpackers (located on, you guessed it: The Royal Mile).  Usually the rooms and beds in hostels are denoted from letters and numbers (room C, bed 4...) but ours were all given names.  Our room was "Little Miss", and each of the beds had a specific personality trait as a name.  Jess got "fun", another friend of mine got "wise", and I got "stubborn".  ....Great.  Jess and I just spent the evening walking around town, stopping in a pub for a meal.  It was a Saturday night, so everyone was out in town looking their very best, but Jess and I headed back to the hostel pretty early since she was running in the morning.











The next day, I took advantage of the beautiful sunny weather to do some of the outdoor stuff that Mom and I didn't have a chance to see.  First stop was Calton Hill, which is a destination for photographers for its great panoramic views.  It also holds a few notable monuments and a City Observatory. 

 

 Next up were the Royal Botanical Gardens of Edinburgh, a renowned center for plant research, conservation, and education.  There are technically four areas that make up the Royal Gardens; the "botanics" in Edinburgh, the mountain-side Benmore in Argyll, Dawyck in the wooden hills of the Scottish borders, and Logan on a Gulf Stream peninsula in Galloway.  All of these places differ drastically in topography and soil quality, enabling the Royal Gardens to have a wide range of plants.  All together, they constitute one of the richest plant collections on earth with over 15,000 species.
I spent nearly three hours in the garden, which shows how large it really is.  One part that stuck out to me was the man-made mountain wall, with regulated pressure and temperature of the area to best replicate the environment that mountain plants grow in.  It's been really successful, with dozens of mountain species flourishing inside this room.
I took a ton of pictures, but don't have much to say about them, so I'll just include some of my favorites:

 

 

 

  


The gardens were about a mile and half out of town, so by the time I walked back to the Royal Mile, I was ready to finally sit down.  I decided to go to the Elephant Cafe, the coffee shop that JK Rowling jotted down some of her first Harry Potter ideas on a napkin.  I got a cappuccino and an elephant-shaped cookie which I enjoyed while reading a book.  Hoping that I could channel some of Rowling's writing genius, I decided to write something on a napkin myself.  I didn't have time to start a novel, so I opted for a poem instead.
  This was all I came up with:

I don't think I'm ready to be published, but it's a start.