Day 10

Today, some students explored more of London, some are in France spending the weekend with family members, and most of us went to Edinburgh, Scotland for the day. We had originally planned on spending a night in Scotland, however, the hotels and hostiles were booked and the prices were expensive. Since we knew we were only spending the day, we woke up early to catch the first train to Edinburgh, which left the King's Cross Station at 6:15 am. Since the Tube system does not run that early in the morning, we split a cab fare and boarded the train for our 5 hour ride to the capital of Scotland. Time went by quickly since we all slept for most of the journey. Luckily, the Edinburgh station is conveniently located within a 5 mile radius of most of the city's best attractions, so it was a quick walk up a steep alley to reach The Royal Mile.
Since Regents had not been opened for breakfast before we left, the first thing we did was stopped to eat. The menu posted outside of a cafe called "Rabbie Burns" caught our attention so we sat down for meals consisting of breakfast baguettes, chicken and cheese-stuffed baked potatoes and tomato basil soup. After lunch we headed up to the top of The Royal Mile where the Edinburgh Castle was located, occasionally stopping at shops along the way for gifts and souvenirs. We were all ecstatic to find live musicians dressed in kilts and traditional Scottish attire playing the bagpipes along the sidewalks, and we stopped to admire their music momentarily.







The first thing we noticed about Scotland is that it is extremely windy. We had to take several pictures to get one without everyone's hair flying in the air or covering their face because of how powerful the wind was. Just as we were finishing admiring the landscape of Scotland from the top of The Royal Mile and about to head into the castle entrance, we were stopped by a worker and told to back up for the changing of the guard ceremony. Once the guards had been switched, we entered the castle and walked through various museums explaining the histories of the castle, and Scotland's heroes and royalty. The last building we entered contained the crown jewels of Scotland, which were magnificant.
From the castle, we continued our sporadic shopping back down The Royal Mile until we arrived at a bus stop where we boarded a guided bus tour around Edinburgh. The wind was chilly and it started to sprinkle but we were so in awe at the unique landscaping and architecture that we barely noticed. The bus stopped briefly in front of the gates of the palace and our guide explained that the palace was closed to the public for today since the royal family was currently occupying it!



After transferring to a second bus to complete our tour, we stopped at Subway on our way back to the train station for a snack, and then took the 5 pm train back to London. The train ride back seemed longer than the first ride since we did not sleep, but we passed the time by playing several rounds of Uno and observing the countryside of Scotland that we had missed earlier. We had a beautiful day and only wished that we could have had more time in Scotland.