Day 14: Harry Potter and SCOTLAND!

It was definitely an early start this morning! We met at the Roehampton security gate at 5AM this morning in order to travel by taxi to Kings Cross Station.


Our first order of business when we arrived at the station was to visit Platform 9 3/4 (of course!)... the infamous platform that Harry Potter ran through to get to the train station that would take him to Hogwarts. It was very fun to get to see, although we thought it would be a little bit more than half a trolley stuck through a wall ;) But it’s all okay because apparently they were filming at that very place just 5 weeks ago for the final Harry Potter movie! Way cool :)


We waited around for quite some time in the train station since we got there a bit too early… and slept on the ground....


As evidenced by the picture above, Tony purchased us some much needed coffees from Naro Café Express and we hung out until our train left at 7. There was a group of friends on the train who’s friend apparently missed the train! You almost had to be there, but they kept yelling on the phone for at least 15 minutes “Daniel, Daniel I said King’s Cross, not King's Crossette! Daniel, the train is just pulling away... RUN for it! Come on mate, catch the next train! We want you to be there! Daniel!” It was hilarious, but maybe you just have to add the accent in there with it to make it as funny as it was! I’m glad to report after the 15 minutes of screaming Daniel’s name, he came on the 8 AM train to Scotland.

I sat next to Emma on the train and after I took a few hours to sleep (restlessly), we broke out our laptops to work on our essays for our Questioning Citizenship class. We were feeling really energetic for some reason so we were definitely singing and just being totally random. One of my favorite parts of the train ride was when we collectively assembled a list of words that are different between the British and Americans… I’ll keep adding to it and publish it at the end of the trip! So far, it’s great :)

Tony, the Recruitment and Marketing Officer at Roehampton University, is taking us on this weekend trip. We call him our UK dad (and Kirsten our UK mom) because he is so organized and willing to help us with anything! He brought breakfast for us this morning and it was so amazing! We got croissants with ham and cheese, all sorts of fruit, doughnuts, juice boxes (called “cartons of drink” here), and more! It was so nice of him.

It took about 4 hours to get there since the train averaged between 120-140 km/h at most. At about 11:30, we finally arrived to Edinburgh, Scotland!

We were shocked into the Scotland weather the second that we stepped out of the train station because it was a bitter 60 degrees and misty/rainy. You could even see your breath! Because we decided to walk from the train station, we dragged around our luggage for probably about 45 minutes until we got to our accommodation. But we did get a little lost along the way ;)

We stayed at University First Hotel at Edinburgh University and our rooms were NICE! We each got our own room with our own bathrooms as well. It was such a great accommodation!

After dropping off our luggage, we headed to The Elephant House, which was where J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter novel. She wrote parts of the novel on bits of napkin as she sat in the back room overlooking the Edinburgh Castle. It was definitely cool to be in the atmosphere where J.K. Rowling wrote! Our waitress was very accommodating, as we failed at following the system of picking up your own silverware and deciding what to eat before you sat down. Oops!

We headed straight over to the Scottish Parliament, which was extremely different from the UK Parliament. Basically, Scotland has its own Parliament to manage their own country's dealings -- such as education and law. We had a very knowledgeable tour guide who confirmed my love of the Scottish accent! The building for the Scottish Parliament was built in 1997 and was intended to be environmentally friendly. The design of the building is based off of the shape of the tree, with the roofs of the main buildings resembling leaves from the top. From the inside, the roof looks like upturned boats, in order to represent the naval history of Scotland. The Scottish Parliament is very new and up-to-date, and is definitely not as traditional and historical as the UK Parliament.

Also, the main room for debates is set up in a semi-circle fashion in order to promote more discussion-based debates as opposed to fights. In fact, the UK parliament room has two clear sides that are 2 sword lengths apart from one another. The Scottish Parliament also allows for more transparency as the gallery for public viewing is very close to the actual Parliament members and is not divided by a glass wall. It was very interesting to see the differences and similarities between the two Parliaments, even though Scotland and England are both within the UK.

Gotta have silly too... :)

After visiting Parliament, we headed to The Outsiders for dinner. It was SO GOOD! A lot of us had either chicken, steak, or fish and then crème brulée for dessert… It was so amazing! We all had a lot of fun at dinner and it was such a nice, candlelit atmosphere :) After dinner we headed down King George IV Street to The Three Sisters pub to experience a different side of Scottish culture! Great first day of Scotland :)