Kobi & Brian: Europe 2013-2014: April 2014

As we approach the end of our gap year in London, there was one big ticket item left on our bucket list. So we grabbed four of the best lads and lassies around and headed to Edinburgh for the Easter long weekend!

Edinburgh is such a beautiful city - from the second we arrived we understood why everyone had been raving about it to us. It looks so old (in some parts medieval) and has some amazing history which we'd hear all about over the next two days.

Things we've loved about Edinburgh

Funnily enough, the weather! We got a beautiful sunny day on our first day - our guide told us there are about three a year, so we got very lucky!
Imposing the rule that if you say the word 'mine', you have to do 10 push-ups. This led to endless setups, and hilarious amounts of push-ups. My favourites - Brian on the train, Simon in the pub, Emma on our walking tour, and Dan just about every half hour. Dan actually woke up sore after the first day of playing.
The walking tour we did on the first day. We still swear by these as the best way to learn about the city. If you don't go on the tours, you don't find out all the cool stuff. Like the fact that the love heart formed in the pavement outside St Giles Cathedral is actually spat on by locals as part of an old tradition. Which would have been handy information to know for all the tourists who lie on the ground next to the heart to take a selfie next to it. Gross.
Walking through the cemetery where JK Rowling got a lot of the inspiration for Harry Potter characters - there are gravestones for Peter Pettigrew, McGonagall and we even got a photo with Tom Riddle's grave!
Trying haggis after learning about how it's all the parts of the sheep that the rich people don't want, crushed up, stuffed into a sheeps stomach and boiled. It was actually really nice - served with 'neeps and tatties' (turnips and mashed potato)
Tasting Irn Bru, Scotland's national soft drink. It outsells CocaCola every year, and is the only country in the world where that happens. It's bubblegum flavoured and pretty good!
Edinburgh castle, perched up ontop of a dead volcano.
The streets of Edinburgh, lined with old gothic buildings, pubs, buskers playing bagpipes and about a million cashmere and kilt stores
Climbing one of the tracks to Arthur's Seat, another dead volcano, for the best views of Edinburgh.
Our Easter egg hunt on Sunday - particularly when Dan found his Easter egg, and when someone asked whose it was, he answered 'mine'. Ten more push-ups for Dan!
Having a three course meal at The Witchery, a beautiful old restaurant on the site where witches were burned at the stake in medieval times. Highly recommend the beetroot sorbet!
The night tour we did, which focused on the haunted past of Edinburgh, including the underground tunnels and chambers. I was seriously scared during this, especially after the guide explained that there were 72 documented incidents of people coming out of these tunnels on the tour covered in scratch marks! I almost died when we were in a prison cell in a cemetery where hundreds of people died, and an actor jumped out at the group in a black cloak. The mausoleum of the executioner (Mackenzie) was really spooky, and there is a story of the MacKenzie poltergeist haunting that graveyard and people feeling someone grab their arm while near MacKenzies grave. I clung to Brian the entire time - if he had scratch marks, they were from me.
Saturday night when Emma went to get dressed to go out and came back wearing Dans clothes. The photos are hilarious. She actually went out in them, until Dan sent her home.

Our trip was far too short, two days in the Edinburgh sunshine wasn't enough! We will just have to add it to the ever growing list of places we'd love to come back to one day! A special thanks to our flatties Dan and Emma, and the flat mates before us, Simon and Sarah, for such a good weekend. It just reinforced how much we are going to miss you all when we leave!

Lots of love from wee old London,

Kobi & Brian

xxx