Posting this a little late, but last weekend I went to Scotland and checked out both Edinburgh and Glasgow. Becky met me up there, and on Friday night we went to a really good restaurant called the Witchery, just down the street from Edinburgh Castle..
Apparently this is actually where they used to hang all the "witches" back in the day, which is pretty intense (witch is pretty intense, hahaha ha ha). It was on the street called the Royal Mile. At the end of the street is Edinburgh Castle, then along the street are a bunch of government buildings, churches, pubs, touristy shops and Mary Kings Close.
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| Edinburgh Castle |
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| High Kirk of Edinburgh |
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| More churches... |
Mary Kings Close was pretty crazy. Essentially the Old Town of Edinburgh used to be a bunch of really tall buildings that were really close together, and the only streets between them were alleyways only like 6 feet wide, called "closes". At some point they just decided to build a building *on top* of these buildings, and essentially bury the old closes. I still have no clue why they decided to do this - maybe it had something to do with all the plague-spreading going on in the closes. Some of the closes still exist, but many of them are buried, and are essentially just a hill now. We went on a tour of Mary Kings Close, which was pretty cool and kinda creepy. Along the Royal Mile there are also a ton of tourist shops, all of which have a ton of things with my last name on them (you know, Robert the Bruce King of Scotland being my ancestor and all...)
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| A booklet with the Bruce family history and the family tartan (plaid pattern) on it... |
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| Bruce shot glass... |
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| lions and tigers and plaid, oh my! |
They are really crazy about plaid over there. Even the hotel room was decked out in plaid in every possible way...
On Saturday night we took the train over to Glasgow and met up with my high school friend Patchee and his wife Shona. We had a good dinner and some scotch and beer in a cool bar in Glasgow. It was good to see them since I hadn't since their wedding last summer.
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| Patchee and me |
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| Shona and Becky |
Oh and one last thing, what trip to Scotland would be complete without some bagpipes!
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