Edinburgh: Land of a million castles

Day 1 has officially wrapped up!  I landed in Edinburgh, Scotland today around noon and took an airport bus to the part of city called New Town, where I met my friend Kate. 

As a quick backstory, Kate is my bff from freshman year high school science class in Denver, where she currently still resides. We bonded over a mutual interest in not-paying-attention in class and complete opposite tastes in music (she definitely has the cooler band interests).  Anyhow, she is starting a 2-week solo Scotland trip, of which I am crashing the first two days.

This is Kate, and we are testing out the selfie stick

What It's All About:

Edinburgh is seriously the most adorable/majestic looking place ever. I swear every single building is a castle, and you like, look around you in a 360 and everything is a castle. We started naming them things like "Castle #52" and "Castle #6".  Add in the charming accents and the nicest people ever (so many people reached out to help us with info unsolicited), and it's like living in a fairytale-land.

Oh hey, Castle #41

Cliffnotes of the Day:

• Saw a famous dog statue.  We didn't even realize it was famous until we saw a bunch of tourists taking photos of it, and then read in the Lonely Planet that it was the most famous statue here, so obviously went back to take photos with it because we found out it was famous.  The story is the dog (called Greyfriars Bobby) was so loyal to his owner that when his owner died and was buried at Greyfriars Kirk cemetary, he stayed at his owner's grave for 14 years and refused to ever leave.  Kind of sounds like my former dog, except opposite in every way given he would have left me in a heartbeat if there was a treat somewhere else.

Tiny adorbs dog statue

• Had drinks at the Elephant House, where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter

Elephant House and pot o'tea. We are basically J.K. Rowlings in the making.

• Ate dinner by the waterfront in Leith at the most beautiful/delicious seafood restaurant ever called Fishers. The seafood was super fat and fresh, which are two adjectives I want all my food to be.
• Went to the top of an overlook called Calton Hill to watch the sunset, which was ridic in every way.

On top of Calton Hill

Ummm WHAT is this sunset!?

The Hotel:
Dene Guest House, which is so cute (I like hotel room photos, for some reason) and located in a convenient part of New Town. They even have the old-school keys with the loop and the teeth! Things that matter, people.

Dene Guest House

Fun Facts of the Day:

• The sky stays bright super late - the sunset photo above was taken around 10, 10:30pm. It was wild.
• I ate a scone today the size of a frisbee
• Edinburgh doesn't have a metro/subway, so the most popular mode of transportation is by bus, which a bunch are double-decker and cost £1.50 every trip. Best spot on the bus is the top-level, first row, which is just one giant window. It's like riding an amusement park ride, where it looks like you're going to run over every single person on the street and branches come thwacking scarily against the windowpane. The rush, I tell you.
• Harry Potter fans are no joke. There is always a line at Elephant House and the bathroom walls are covered in more HP references from die-hard fans than you'll ever hope to see in your lifetime.

Day 1, out!