I Helped Build a LEGO Cathedral and Stuff (Day 13)

We departed York early in the morning today to head up to Edinburgh (with several side stops on the way). First, we stopped in Durham. Durham is where the third oldest University in the UK is located (after Oxford and Cambridge) and it also holds a beautiful castle and a gorgeous cathedral. I actually think Durham is one of my favorite towns that we have visited, because it is not a tourist destination. It's just a college town that is doing its own thing.

We got to do our own self-guided tour through the Cathedral and it was incredible. There is definitely an aura of reverence and respect for everything, and again the cathedral is still very much in use. 

Actually they are in the process of trying to raise money for repairs and restoration of some portions of the Cathedral and they have this really cool LEGO Cathedral that you can "help build" by donating a pound, and then getting a piece that you can place on the building. I definitely thought that it was worth it, so I did. I even got this cool sticker to prove it:

After that we really didn't have much more time, but we walked past the castle and down to the main square which is like this really funny hybrid pedestrian zone but you can pay to drive through. It was just a little taste of what life in the average English town is really like. I loved it. 

Our next stop, after the most terrifying bus ride up this hilly, curvy country road that was definitely not intended to have busses driving on it, was Hadrian's wall. Totally different atmosphere from Durham. It is out in the countryside, and is actually the remains of an ancient wall that divided territories when the Romans controlled the British Isles. The coolest thing is it's just basically this ancient roman fortress ruin that you can climb on and walk all over, which is what I did. I just climbed and walked and explored for about an hour trying to imagine what life would have been like here over a thousand years (two thousand?) ago. It's crazy to think about. 

We made a really brief stop at Jedburgh (in Scotland finally) to look at Guilford Abbey for about 10 minutes. Guilford Abbey is one of the oldest preserved/reconstructed Romanesque abbeys. It was pretty neat even if I don't really know terribly much about its significance.

At last we arrived in Edinburgh. Something you probably don't think too much about is the fact that England, and even more so, Scotland, are much farther north than the continental U.S. Which means that in Edinburgh it is light outside from probably 4 or 5 am until 10 or 11 pm. One thing that I noticed about that is that it really made the city feel more safe, because even though it was late, it was so light outside that there were still people milling about and there wasn't the same atmosphere of "nightlife" that exists even in London. (Picture taken at around 8:30-9 pm)

We ended up going on a very interesting quest to find dinner. The map didn't illustrate very well the fact that our hotel was actually on a bridge, and so we had to go on a street that went underneath a bunch of other streets, and was a little on the sketchy side, but we ended up in this totally non-tourist area square/market area. We had some of the most delicious food at a pub called Biddy Mulligan's. It was amazing.

We spent the next two hours or so just wandering around, and found a place where there is a really cool view of the Edinburgh skyline vibe. I love Edinburgh much more than I love London, which I didn't think was possible. Instead of the mix of ancient and modern than characterizes London (which I really love, don't get me wrong), Edinburgh is just really unified in its architecture and has an older vibe, which turns out I actually am really into. 

(This is the castle. If you look in the picture just above this one, this shot in just barely out of the screen on the right. So it's kind of just in the middle of the city. On a giant rock)

Plus we ate real Scottish Shortbread and Tablet and also Germany is going to be in the World Cup Final. So that's exciting :)