No, not everyone in Scotland wears plaid

After a 6 hour bus ride we arrived in Scotland. The landscape had changed, the weather had changed, the accents had changed - it was clear that we had arrived in a different country. It was cold and drizzly but we warmed up with some hot food at a Jekyll and Hyde themed bar, complete with Goth clientele and a secret bookshelf doorway to the bathroom. We went and hung out at our hostel (the best we had stayed at for sure!) and ran into a friend we had met at our London hostel! They played music in the bar/common area all night and this encouraged us to stay up too late (but the music was so good!).

The next day we went on a walking tour of Edinburgh and learned all about its gruesome, gory, spooky past. Witch burnings, battles, haunted graveyards. It made me realize how despite all the violence and issues we grapple with today, generally, as a whole, we have all become a lot more civil. People back then were absolutely ruthless and brutal. We learned the etymology of "shit-faced" (chamber pot dumping from high windows down to the street as everyone was getting home from the pubs), saw the cafe J.K. Rowling first wrote Harry Potter in, and saw a whole bunch of other interesting places and monuments.

The most exciting part of the tour for me was what happened at the pub after the tour ended. After 13 years of being a vegetarian, I decided to eat haggis- a mixture of spiced sheep organs that had been cooked in the sheep's stomach and then served with potatoes and turnips (neeps and tatties). It was surprisingly good, and no, I didn't get sick. Not even a stomach ache! I did feel really strange afterwards but I'm pretty sure this was just shock.

After all of this excitement we went to go meet our next couch surfing hosts, a delightful couple from France. We were having such a nice time we didn't want the night to end. And it didn't. It was still a little bit light when we got back home (after a visit to a pub and consuming a deep fried Mars bar) around midnight. We had never been this far north before, and this time of year the hours of daylight far exceed those of darkness. It was so strange to be walking around at dusk and then look at the time and realize it was 11pm.

See below for the cutest bagpiper in Scotland, the Elephant House Cafe (where Harry Potter was written), rubbing Hume's big toe for good luck, drinking Irn Bru (Scotland's very own soft drink- outlawed in the States) and other various scenes from Scotland. I dedicated an entire post to haggis, so stay tuned!