Edinburgh- Email Style

So, since I have a paper to write instead of writing another blog entry, here's a copy of an email I just sent to my parents:

Hello!!!
So, I'm on the train on the way home from Scotland. We just passed over the border into England. As I write this, we're passing along the coast- craggy cliffs drop off to the ocean on the left and on the right, the sky is settling into sunset. The trip was a ton of fun. Edinburgh is located right on the western coast of Edinburgh and our hostel was on the outskirts of town, but it was on a hill overlooking the bay, the the property ran right to the beach. I took two really nice morning walks along the water before anyone else was really up. On Friday evening, after we got the hostel sorted, we went for a walk around town with Bill to get ourselves situated. Luckily, Edinburgh is a pretty small city, so you don't really need public transport, and the main drag, called the Royal Mile, has enough stuff to occupy all of us for the evening. We saw the cafe turned Chinese Buffet where J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book. I went to a pub for dinner, and split an appetizer of haggis to try with two friends, Sarah and Ally. It is pretty good- it tastes kind of like roast beef hash, but it's creamy and a little spicy. They serve it with neeps and tatties- turnips (which are also pretty good!) and mashed potatoes. For my main course, I got corned beef hash with a sweet onion sauce and no egg (yuck). It was really good, but I prefer my hash a little crispier from the electric frying pan. I split a dessert of treacle tart (Harry Potter's favorite dessert!) with Sarah. It was really good. I was expecting it to be the consistency of pecan pie except tasting of molasses, but it was kind of spongy and not too sweet at all. That night we went on a ghost tour. Edinburgh is supposed to be one of the most haunted cities in the UK. We went to a graveyard known as Greyfriars. Greyfriars is famous for Greyfriars Bobby- a dog who, after his owner was buried in the cemetery, wouldn't leave the premises. Bobby was 2 when his owner died and spent the rest of his life until he was 17 being fed and hanging out in the graveyard. The graveyard is this big hill and on the ghost tour we learned that it used to be a valley. The town ran out of room in the 15th century for all of the dead, so they just started turning the graveyard into a layer cake. There are 500 headstones and approximately 40,000 people buried there. We went into the prison where the clergymen of the church belonging to the graveyard were imprisoned and tortured when Scotland was changing religions. It was creepy, but not really terrifying in any way. They did have a guy waiting to jump out at us, and of course I jumped and screamed, but really, that was to be expected.
On Saturday we spent the morning at Edinburgh castle, which has a long and storied military history. The Scottish Crown Jewels, called the Scottish Honors, are kept there. We were allowed in to see them. Part of the Honors includes this sword that has to be 3 1/2- 4 feet long! After the castle, it was time for a quick lunch on the run to the Parliament. Scotland got their own parliament in the late 90s and the building is very new. The outside doesn't blend in with the historic part of town it sits in, but the inside is really quite pretty. After the tour of Parliament, Bill decided that we had not had enough exercise in our life so we climbed an 850 foot craggy hill called Arthur's Seat. The view from the top was spectacular. We could see out over all of Edinburgh and the ocean. Scotland has some of the most spectacular natural beauty that I have ever seen. The top was incredibly windy - I legitimately would not have been surprised if someone had gotten blown off the top. Kite flying in Scotland is more like involuntary-landsurfing, as we've dubbed it. Last night we went to a ceilidh. The music was good- just three violins and a keyboard and one bagpipe solo by a traditional player. The dance was part of the University of Edinburgh's Folk Music Society's 50th anniversary celebrations. We all danced with strangers, and I danced with Bill for the first dance- he dragged me onto the floor. It was a ton of fun, but exhausting, especially after climbing up the 850 ft hill.
Today was spent touring Holyrood Palace, the Queen's official residence in Scotland. Since its a working palace, we only got to see like 10 rooms, but it was still really impressive. The back of the palace has a ruined abbey, which is always eerily interesting because it generally signifies a large-scale change of religion across the country, which in general is a bad time for everyone. The rest of the day was spent window shopping, and a stop in the morning at this amazing place called Chocolate Soup. It's a cafe that focuses on hot chocolate instead of coffee. I got a hot chocolate sundae and a muffin and it was glorious.
There was just almost a scene on the train. There are these women around 50 years of age talking and laughing at the top of their lungs and being really disrespectful to the rest of the train carriage. One of our students went up to them to nicely ask that they be a little more quiet and one of them responded "Hell no, we won't." So then, of course, because apparently no one can behave like an adult, another student went up and piped in with the fact that there are 36 students and 5 of these women. Now, these women are really annoying- I can hear them with my headphones turned up, but this is also not a reason for a bunch of students to start a fight with these women who may or may not be a little inebriated. One of the women responded to the second prompt of majority rules with "If we were in your country we'd expect you all to act like us and we wouldn't have a problem with it." Which is again, not really mature either. So, then someone went off to fetch a staff member on the train. We've been told they're going to get off at the next stop, but now they've starting singing songs . They're getting off the train now, and one of them came up to one of the students and told them that "When she goes to America, she hopes that we make her feel as welcome there as she was here today" now the woman is up by us talking about how we're all a disgrace, even though she was the one that came up to us and started instigating with us. For the record, they are UK citizens. I'm not surprised by the immaturity shown by the IC students- most of them are 19 and 20, but the adults' behavior startled me a little. Whatever, they're almost off the train. I'm glad the three people I'm sitting with are more adult than everyone else in this car.

Cheers!
P.S. Pictures tomorrow or the day after!