Another round of pictures!

Well, I posted the pictures of my trip up the mountain (if it can be called that), but I wanted to put up some pictures that I've taken from around Edinburgh, particularly of my the area around New College, the School of Divinity for the University of Edinburgh.

But first...the castle!! Edinburgh Castle, that is. And what a castle it is!

Three shots of the castle; the first one is from the park which seems to be the border between the Old Town (where I live) and the New Town (where all the shopping malls and McDonalds restaurants are). The other two, which are closer up, are from a scavanger hunt I went on, put on by my school and designed to give us new international students a sense of the layout of the city. Edinburgh Castle is amazing...I haven't been inside it yet (hopefully this weekend), but seeing it from anywhere in town is stunning. And I've also been to one of the cafes in which J.K. Rowling apparently wrote large sections of (at least the first) Harry Potter, and from there you can see the castle. It really is what I imagine Hogwarts to look like; one can easily see where she got her inspiration, living so close to this huge castle.

Now, I said that the first picture is from the park between Old and New Town, so here's a picture of the park. Well, part of the park, anyway.


As you can see, it's gorgeous, even on a mostly overcast, gray day (which happen to be one of my favorite kinds of days, for the record). Now, this is, as I said, just part of the park. It runs for some way off further in this direction, until it hits Waverly Station, a train depot (though I haven't seen many trains there...I need to figure out when I can see a train. I like trains). It also runs a bit in the other direction, which takes it in front of New College.






That's it; that's New College. It's about a 10-15 minute walk from my flat, in a part of town called The Mound. It takes it's name from the fact that it is, well, a mound of earth, actually. The Mound is part of Castle Rock (yes, they call the place on which Edinburgh Castle is built Castle Rock...it's like I never left Crescent City, really), and so I go to school, literally, a block or two away from a castle. Tight! Pay extra close attention in this picture to the tower on your left hand side...not the big tall pointy one in the far left, but the left hand tower of the central building (New College). In this tower, and I kid you not, there is a computer lab, which sometimes is home to undergraduate classes. I have used this computer lab many times to check my email when I didn't feel like lugging my laptop around. And since it's so awesome, here are some pictures!




The picture on the left is metanding at the top of the circular staircase within the tower (you can see my shows at the bottom of the picture). It's like a castle, it really is; I actually get dizzy if I go up and down these steps too quickly; as you can see, they're very windy. But it's fantastic, I'm in a tower. The picture on the right is a view out of one of the windows along the stairwell of the tower, looking out toward the Firth of Forth (not sure what that means, really, but it's where the river meets the ocean...I guess those are called Firths here). You can't really see the water in this shot, though, 'cause my camera doesn't have a telephoto lens for long shots. However, you are looking at New Town, which is a very cool place. The ancient-style building in the foreground of the frame is part of the National Gallery of Scotland...which, so far as I've been able to gather, is an art museum. Haven't been inside, though, but it seems cool, and it must be educational, because I've seen loads of field trips from local schools coming out of there.



Here are two more shots of New Town, from just in front of New College (still up on the Mound). You can see the Firth in the left picture, and a couple double decker buses in the right picture (most of the buses, even the public transit buses, are double decker here, how awesome is that?).

So, in one of my days of wandering around, I went a different route. Normall, I'll walk up Nicolson St., heading north, and turn left on the Royal Mile (the street running between the castle and the palace), and then hang a right and go down to New College. From there, going to New Town is just a trip down some steps, across the park, and I'm there. Well, this past weekend, that's how I got to New Town, in order to get a mobile phone at 3 Store, literally just across the park from my school (tight!), and then I turned left and walked up Princes St., the street with all the shopping on it. As I got to the end of the street, where I saw this picture; this is North Bridge. Remember when I said I walked north up Nicoloson St.? Well, Nicolosn becomes South Bridge, and then North Bridge before hitting Princes St.; and here it is. Now, you all know that I'm terrified of heights, particularly bridges...but I walked across this bad boy. And I have pictures to prove it!



On the left, a view to the east, from the middle of North Bridge. On the right, a view from the middle of North Bridge, straight down. Apparently there's a little walkway outside the railing I was standing next to, but I didn't know that at the time; the railing on this bridge comes up to just below my neck, and is about a foot wide, so I couldn't see down (thank goodness). I was holding the camera out and telling myself that I wasn't going to knock the railing over.


And here is another shot from the middle of North Bridge, looking out over buildings on the edge of Old Town, and looking straight at Arthur's Seat. This shot really lets you see my confusion before summiting there; the long plateau in the middle of the frame is what I thought was Arthur's Seat, and the peak just above the plateau is actually Arthur's Seat. And I've been up there! Scotland is apparently magical...I drink less soda, I don't have a TV, and I climb small mountains and take pictures from the middle of bridges across which I walk. What the hell? I don't understand it either.

Well, that's it for the pictures this round. There will, of course, be others, as I do other touristy things here (e.g., touring the Castle or the Palace, or when I travel to other parts of the UK or Europe). But, I will start updating this every Tuesday evening (Tuesday evening here in Scotland, so, for y'all in the States, that'll be Tuesday late morning/early afternoon). This might be pictures, it might be stories, it might be me ranting and/or raving about results in the upcoming election (not just the Presidential part, but, you know, other stuff, too); who knows?!

Be patient. It gets amazing.

PS - I don't quite understanding the layout formatting of this thing yet, so the pictures didn't quite line up like I'd hoped. Whatever, who are you to judge?