After coming back from Portugal and Madrid I had exactly half a day to pack my things for another adventure. I went to Scotland with my friends for a couple of days. It was my second time in Scotland. It’s one of my favourite countries and always has been. Why do I love it so much? Beautiful nature, old castles, bagpipes, redheads, tartan, the accent…I love the accent, even though it’s hard to understand sometimes 😀

Okay, so do you remember how sick I was in Madrid? I was feeling way better at home but the next day I lost my voice 😦 We travelled with my friend from Bratislava to Edinburgh via London. We had to wait around 6 hours for our plane at Stansted (another friend joined us there) and I slowly started to lose my voice. This is becoming quite a ritual every summer now when I’m sick I slowly started to lose my voice at the airport so I was trying not to speak very loud or at all. I went to a pharmacy to buy some pills that would help. I don’t really remember when I could properly speak again but I guess on the third day everything was already okay.

I will keep this post as a gallery mainly as I’m planning to write more about the sights in my 2015 travel article from Edinburgh that will hopefully be published in this decade lol. Here are some nice pictures from the late afternoon walk we took around the Princes street.

We were accomodated at Homes for Students Beaverbank Place which was a nice place to stay, not very far from the city centre and it was cheap as well. During our stay in Edinburgh we visited Scottish National Gallery and National Museum of Scotland. Both had free access. I love all those free museums in the UK! I spent 5 hours in the National Museum when I was waiting for my flight to Vienna when I was coming back from Faroe Islands 😀

Fun fact 1: the first cloned mammal, the sheep Dolly, is in the National Museum.

Fun fact 2: The extinct animal species called Quagga is exhibited in the museum. Quagga is a subspecies of Zebra. She came from London Zoo and is the only one ever photographed alive. She died in 1872. I read about Quaggas two days ago and today I was looking at my pictures and I was like ”Wait, is that a Quagga?” I completely forgot I took a picture of a Quagga years ago 😀 Anyway, there is a project in South Africa trying to bring Quaggas back from extinction by selective breeding of zebras.

We visited the Edinburgh castle, walked down the Royal Mile up to the Palace of Hollyroodhouse, The Queen’s official residence in Scotland. We also saw the famous Victoria street with colourful houses. From there we went up to Calton Hill to see the best view over Edinburgh. At least for me it’s one of the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen. When I stood there I wanted to cry from how beautiful the sight of Edinburgh was.

One of my favourite places we visited was huge The Tartan Weaving Mill shop on the Castlehill. I think it had 4 floors. Me and my friend were fascinated by all the things they had there. We just love all things tartan.

Some bonus pictures: I love me some good puns or funny named establishments.

Ultimate bonus picture: I completely forgot we left that in the kitchen area of our accomodation 😀 Why we bought so much tonic is a mystery.

To sum it up Scotland is amazing and I want to go back like right now. I’ve been there three times so far and I loved each of the visits. Maybe on my fourth time I will be even brave enough to try the deep fried Mars bar 😀 Who am I kidding? I won’t be that brave.