Saturday, 3 Nov: Edinburgh

Saturday morning, we got up and saw the statue of Greyfriar's Bobby, that little terrier who guarded his master's grave everyday until he died. I love that he has this little statue in the middle of the city, and a pub nearby named after him. We didn't go to that one, though. After that, we went to go see the grave of Adam Smith, in Canongate Kirk, which was down the Royal Mile. We figured it was important, because we base our economic system on his writings.

I've been to so many graveyards, churches, and castles this week, it's not even funny. After that, we walked back up the Royal Mile (taking tons of pictures) to go to Edinburgh Castle. It's this gigantic structure on top of an extinct volcano, and it's pretty impressive. We got to see the Stone of Destiny, where Scottish rulers are supposed to be crowned (of course, it was stolen by the English and only returned in the 1950's) and the Scottish crown jewels. We also saw where American sailors were held prisoner during the American Revolution. We also wandered through the War Museum there. Then we walked all the way to the other side of the city to go to the Dean Gallery, part of the network of National Art Galleries in Edinburgh. It was the only art gallery we went to there. The Dean Gallery houses Surrealist art, so it was all kind of really weird stuff. I did get to see a Dali in person, though, so that was exciting, and there was this whole exhibit about a Scottish architect, Basil Spence, who was pretty cool. After hitting some gift shops and dinner, we went on a literary pub crawl of Edinburgh. Not the big, heavily advertised one, but a smaller one with a really cool tour guide named Allan. He knew so many random facts about Edinburgh and it's literary history! It was a lot of fun, and we met a couple from Glasgow, so that was nice. We saw one of the places where Harry Potter was (allegedly) written. Apparently, claiming that JKR went to a place is a big tourist draw, so anywhere where she ever set foot is advertised. Except the Chinese restaurant that now stands in the coffee shop where she actually did write the first few chapters. So go figure. I, however, having a modicum of dignity, did not take pictures of it.