Edinburgh

Edinburgh is a city to behold. Not only did J.K. Rowling wrote the first few books while she was staying there, there are also plenty of interesting ghost tours that you can take up. Furthermore, the city is situated just next to an extinct volcano! And bagpipers!

Arthur's Peak

You can easily spend two days in this medieval city. There is the Edinburgh castle that you can visit, or you can opt to climb Arthur's Peak, which is where the extinct volcano lies. Note that the weather can be rather gloomy and it is quite expensive to enter the castle. (£16). The view from Arthur's Peak is amazing. It is a steep 1 hour climb, and try to scale it on a sunny day, otherwise it would be a total waste of time.

The free walking tour for Edinburgh is also very interesting. It takes you to St Giles cathedral and Greyfrairs Kirkyard, which is a cemetery. J.K. Rowling took some inspiration for the names for her Harry Potter books, like Professor Mcgonagall, Mad Eye Moody, and Tom Riddle. I couldn't find the grave where she got the name Mad Eye Moody from though.

You have to really squint your eyes to see the name Tom Riddell.

There's also this shop called Oink that sells something like roast pork. It may look very appetizing and cool, but the taste is only average.

In Scotland there exists something called the Iron Bru. It's the only soft drink that outsells coke in Scotland, so the Scottish really like their Iron Bru. Kind of tastes like the Red Bull from Thailand.

Have you ever heard of a cage for graves? Apparently grave robbing used to be so rampant because you can sell fresh dead bodies to the medical school in Edinburgh that they had to resort to such measures.

The above photo is a view from Calton Hill, and the second is actually their Scottish Parliament house. What?

Greyfrairs Bobby is actually a grave..for a dog. But he is probably the most famous dog in the world. He used to be owned by a policeman called John Gray. However, John Gray died young and his dog missed his owner so much that he sat by John Gray's grave for a total of 14 years. Talk about loyalty. Later on there was a law that passed that banned pets from the cemetery, and to let Bobby continue on guarding his owner's grave, they declared Bobby to be a citizen of Edinburgh and gave him voting rights. He actually could vote even before women could!