A Walk to Remember: Edinburgh Royal Mile

I’m in Europe and it seems so surreal! I’ll let you know when it finally sets in. I keep saying it out loud, hoping that it will finally seem real, but it hasn’t quite yet.

Everything went well with my flights. We had about a 45 minute delay in Salt Lake on our stifling hot plane because something was wrong with our engine valve. After they got it fixed we made it safely to Minneapolis and quickly hurried to our next flight. Instead of a couple of hours for a layover, we had minutes, but it was alright and we were on our way to Amsterdam.

I was afraid this flight to Amsterdam would be terrible because it was so long (And I know a lot of you are thinking it’s not a long flight because you’ve been on 14 hour flights, but when the longest flight I’ve only ever flown was 5 hours, 8 and a half seems like an eternity). It ended up being just fine though. The group I flew with was lots of fun! I watched 2 movies, ate my dinner, and tried to get some sleep. My plane food was actually pretty good. My hunger may have contributed, but I was pleasantly surprised about the food after hearing bad reviews from others about “nasty airplane food.” It was also nice because unlike some of my group members, I went straight to sleep and slept comfortably until the pilot announced on the intercom that we were approaching Amsterdam. This was definitely helpful in adjusting to the time change.

Our final flight was from Amsterdam to Edinburgh. I was so happy to finally get here! Edinburgh is beautiful! Windy, but beautiful. Professor Kimball had planned a tour for us on the Royal Yacht Britannia to keep us awake. That was really fun and thoroughly impressive. I especially loved the formal dining hall where the Queen hosted many foreign dignitaries.

At that point we were all pretty exhausted, so we ate dinner at a pub near our hotel, walked out to the lighthouse right behind our hotel, and headed to bed. I slept wonderfully and only woke up once in the night. Unlike some of the others in my group, I made myself go back to sleep. It has helped a lot today because I’m almost adjusted to the time change.

Our second day in Edinburgh began with a tour of Scottish Microelectronics. It was really cool to see their clean rooms and hear about how they filter the rooms to allow the microchips to be developed in a completely sterile environment. Between this business visit and our next we had a few hours on the Royal Mile. We walked down to the Elephant House, which is best known as “The Birthplace of Harry Potter.” It is here where J.K. Rowling began to write the Harry Potter books. Really cool! We walked through a beautiful cathedral on the royal mile and then down to the Palace of Holyroodhouse (where the Queen stays for part of her summer). Our second business visit was through the Scottish Parliament. It is a very modern, unique building with very special architectural features. It was interesting to learn about how the Scottish government works and the symbolism behind the architecture. My favorite part of this visit was seeing how open the Scottish government is to the public. The public is welcome to any meeting of their congress and all of the meetings are filmed and posted online for later viewing. Very cool!

After the Scottish Parliament we walked up the Royal Mile to the Edinburgh Castle. My first castle! It was so cool! I loved the history of the castle that the tour guide told us about. It was interesting to learn about the dynamics between Scotland and England over the centuries. That would definitely be an interesting history to study more fully. I loved walking around and seeing all of the levels. The crown jewels of Scotland were in one of the museums in the castle and that was really cool to see. We also saw where American prisoners of war were kept during the “American War of Independence” (aka. The Revolutionary War). I loved seeing how the war is viewed from the British perspective. I loved the castle so much and it gave us incredible views of Edinburgh.

We walked around the city a little more and ate at a really incredible Italian hole-in-the-wall restaurant before catching a bus back to our hotel. To finish off the night we walked along the shore of the Firth of Forth. I touched the North Sea! Anyway, Edinburgh has been great! Unfortunately I only heard bagpipes once, but the city was beautiful enough to make up for it.

We head to Preston tomorrow and I can’t wait! Hopefully I can find better internet there and I'll upload some pictures.