Speas and Eichhorn Do Edinburgh, Part One

Eureka! A blog post!

I know, I know, I know. I've been neglecting my blog. But I'll make it up to you, Blog, I promise. I'll buy you some nice HTML codes to make it up to you.

Anyhoos, this past weekend was very exciting, because Jacob came from Prague to visit! He's the first person from Wake that I've seen this semester, and we had a really wonderful time wandering around Edinburgh and seeing all of the sites. I've been having random bouts of slight homesickness recently, and hanging out with someone from home was really great and reassuring - plus, after a month and a half of functioning in Czech, I'll bet that an English-speaking country was a nice break for Jacob.

So on Friday afternoon I met Jacob at the airport, and we bused back into the city for lunch with no problems. This was very comforting, because airports make me really nervous - I'm always terrified that some crazy, random happenstance will pop up out of nowhere, like a passport or security problem, or the plane had to land somewhere else or something, and everything will derail. Luckily this did not happen, and we got into Edinburgh without a worry.

So after we had lunch at my favorite baguette shop on Nicolson Street, we dropped off our stuff at my room, and we went to visit the Palace of Holyroodhouse, a gorgeous building that I have walked past but not actually gone in. The Palace is Queen Elizabeth II's (and other members of the royal family's) official residence whenever they are in Scotland, although it's arguably more famous as the main home of Mary Queen of Scots. We couldn't take pictures inside, but it was absolutely beautiful - it had dozens of impressive tapestries and paintings and original (17th-century) plasterwork ceilings, as well as an entire exhibit (with jewels and heirlooms) on the Stuarts, from Mary's immediate ancestors to the 18th-century Jacobites.

The Palace of Holyrood House. Where the Queen lives, yo.

Yakob! They gave us cool audio guide tour things. We were really excited.

 The personal chambers of Mary Queen of Scots were also preserved, including the tiny dining room where Mary's second husband Lord Darnley (who was an asshole of the first degree, by the way) and his posse killed her personal secretary David Rizzio. They broke into the Queen's apartments, dragged Rizzio from behind her while they held her at gunpoint, stabbed him 56 times, and left his body on the floor. The Queen was seven months pregnant, and they still have a plaque on the wall showing where Darnley & Co. left Rizzio's body after they killed him. It was eerie. My inner history nerd almost had an aneurysm.

After a lovely tour of the Palace (and after Jacob had to drag me away from all of the pretty pretty [and creepy] history), we wandered around the adjacent Holyrood Abbey and the Palace Gardens. Absolutely stunning.

The ruins of Holyrood Abbey.

Holyrood Abbey with Arthur's Seat in the background. He will feature heavily in the sequel to this post.

We topped this day off with a trip to Red Box, which is a build-your-own-meal kind of Chinese restaurant, where they serve your food in big paper boxes and give you a pair of chopsticks and let you fend for yourself. Quite possibly THE BEST CHINESE I HAVE EVER HAD IN MY LIFE.

SERIOUSLY.

I may or may not have reached nirvana.