Auld Reekie

 

 Whoop de day! Back from Scotland. The house is still standing, and we have a new, really shiny tap. And it actually works!

Edinburgh was nice and I liked all the Scottish things I tried (namely whisky, haggis, oatmeal biscuits and deep fried mars) I'll just cut to the chase and post some pictures:

Right on our first morning we started out with conquering Arthur's Seat (250 m above sea level). The above picture is taken from another, more well groomed hill downtown, Calton Hill (only ca 100 m above the sea).

 

On the way up we found the ruins of an old chapel. The hill is an old volcano, so the rock was really interesting, unlike from anything I've seen before (Finland isn't terribly volcanic).

At this point (chapel ruin height) we had barely started our climb, but the view of the city was already nice. Calton Hill can be seen in the distance to the right, with a tower and a structure resembling a Greek temple on top.

I tried my best to take a picture of a crow flying. This was the best I managed.

There was a really cool craggy ridge. the path underneath it was called Radical Road, but was closed due to risk of huge rocks falling on your head, so we walked along the upper part of the ridge instead.

 

To get down from the top and to the craggy ridge we had to walk along a really zigzaggy set of stairs (marked in orange)

Tentacle cat takes care of your trash!

The Edinburgh Castle was naturally perched high on a hill.

That would be me. We are on our way to find the ocean.

And that would be the shadows of my fellow ocean searchers.

We did find the ocean, but there was always somekind of off limits harbour in the way, and we didn't care enough to find a beach, so we had a look at the mouth of the Water of Leith instead.

During a rainy day we visited Glaswgow. I didn't use the camera much that day. Glasgow was way flatter than Edinburgh, and therefore felt more like an ordinary British city in my opinion. We were good art students and visited the gallery for modern art there.

 

Some shopkeepers are simply more creative than others.

 

And last but not least a slightly retouched image of all of us, from left to right: Me, Finnish Friend (who survived Spain and will be living with us for the rest of uni), Longhaired Roomie, and Roomie (who is considerably harder to draw since she ceased wearing glasses (she had eye correction surgery))

That's all for now, if I am a good person I might post a picture of what manners of nice things I found in Edinburgh later.