2 posts tagged “harry potter”

This will likely be a couple of parts, because PICTURES!  I have a lot more pictures that I'll probably put in my Kodakgallery but it's just not really feasible to put them all here.  Like, pictures of almost every single meal and of like a skillion buildings.  I can email those albums to anybody who asks. 

First of all, this is all we took for 11 days, two people, in the winter:

Flight was long but not too bad.  We got to Heathrow at like 8am and had an 11am flight to Edinburgh.  I think it hit Dane harder than me.  Watched Doubt on the flight, interesting movie.  Not quite what I expected.  Also I read a book called Neverwhere over most of the trip, by Neil Gaiman.  It's a silly fun adventury book, but it's set in all these specific places all over London and kind of either describes or assigns these really fun atmospheres/personalities to them, mostly the Tube stations.  So it was a good London trip book.

 Day 1, sprinkly-weather-hair, our first glimpse at old town and the Castle:

First lunch, this sandwich was amazing. At a place called Pret A Manger, which it turns out is this huge chain of sort of semi-organic freshly made sandwiches and stuff.  Corned beef, mustardseed mayo, pickles, spinach, on a baguette.  Delicious.

 

Me on the bridge in front of Old Town:

 

This is the back of Dane, the sort of back/side of the National Galleries, and a decent view of New Town from near the Castle Hill (the real one, with the castle on it, not the one in Carrollton, ha ha.)

 

This is Dane hauling our stuff up two lengthy and super-windy flights of stairs to the apartment we stayed in while we were there.  Literally like a 3-minute walk from the castle gate-thingie, on the royal mile.  Also: the stairs, and the view from our balcony:

 

Our bedroom (with not-all-that-Ltd Edition Jetlag Dane), and our living room:

 

Out our building and onto the Royal Mile, take a left, maybe 10 more feet and here's your Royal Mile view, including St. Giles Cathedral:

 

So that first day we walked around and then moved into our apartment, then went and had dinner at the Filling Station (which, as it turns out, even though it's right in the middle of all the quaint little pubs and super historical stuff, is a chain.  One that happens to be sort of Friday's-esque, and also themed around the US and Route 66.  Disappointing.  Good fish and chips, though.) 

Then we went to this tiiiiiny pub that was literally right below our apartment, kind of tucked into one of the little archways a few feet off the main road, the Royal Mile.  It was called the Jolly Judge.  There, we had our Guinnesses.  They were good.  And also, Dane got the wi-fi password from them, which just so happened to work in our room, as long as you hung your arm off the right side of the bed at just the right angle.  You can thank them for most of our tweets from the first part of the trip.  If you go to that link, the entrance to the pub is down the stairs, but the entrance to our apartment was right behind those picnic tables.

Then we went home.  I slept for 13 hours.  Yeah yeah, sue me.

Wednesday we took a bus tour of Old town and first New Town, or whatever it's called.  There are, like, phases.  Kind of the main stuff.

This is St. Andrew Square, in New Town:

 

Edinburgh Castle from below the hill.  You can tell why they put it there:

 

Entrance and some tour bus pictures of Holyrood Palace, which is evdidently where the Queen stays when she comes to Edinburgh:

 

After the tour we went to the National Gallery art museum.  I wrote down some of my favorite stuff, but I don't have it with me right now.  Oops.  This particular gallery kind of said it was impressionism but also it had about a skillion of the Madonna-and-Christ-and-hairy-baby-John-the-Baptist paintings, Titian etc.  I think every museum in Europe like has to have a bunch of those unless they're specifically Modern Art.  It was really sweet though. I have to be honest, we went to a lot of museums, some history and some art, and I can remember very vividly certain things about artworks and artists but I can't really remember which of the museums they were in.  My favorites, I think, were the Dean Gallery and the MoMA near the Leith.  Those come later.

We went and ate at the World's End, which used to be the end of the city.  You can still see remnants of the old wall there from like over a thousand years ago.  I had steak and ale pie, chips, and a beer.  It was goooood.  Those following me on twitter will remember my beautiful Scottish scenic view as well.

 

  Then, (THEN!) we went to the Elephant House, which is where a near-destitute Joanne Rowling first dreamed up Hogwarts and Voldemort and little Harry Potter over coffee and a gorgeous view of Edinburgh Castle.  The nerd in me freaked out and squealed a little.  The outer me had a really good latte and shared a piece of cake with Dane.

 

I know there are like 70 million bloggers right now blogging away about the new Harry Potter but it was so awesome, and the best one of the whole thing, and that's what I have to say about it.  I thought there was no way it'd live up to the expectations and the hype, but she was totally saving her best for this one.  I'm so sad it's over.  End of an era.  I'd talk about it, but I don't want to be an evil Spoiler. 

 

I think it might ruin my marriage though.  I wish my husband shared my love for those books.  Some people just don't understand.  Oh well, I'm done reading it now, he'll get his wife back sometime soon. 

 

We went to the midnight party on Friday, Dane, Kat, Mark, Ashley, Bonnie and me.  It was fun, we made Snitches and magic wands (which I just realized I left at the house we were sitting!  Oops.), and went to "Potions" (Starbucks), and got sorted (the doofs put me in Ravenclaw, but I guess everybody can't be Gryffindor, but I really think I would be, but Ravenclaw is the next best.)  And then we sat around and looked at cracked out baby names and maps of Paris, while Mark learned how to defend himself by punching people in the junk.  All in all a good night.  I'll put up pictures as soon as I get one of those USB-memory card things. 

 

I don't feel bad discussing the movie though -- we saw HP5 right before the midnight party.  I thought Umbridge was played really well but looked NOTHING like she was supposed to.  She was vile and everything, in like her actions, but she was supposed to be equally disgusting-looking, but I'll live.  I thought the first half of it was kind of off.  They just had all these lines of exposition, lots of people explaining things, since they didn't really have time to let stuff happen.  And it is hard because so much of that book is internal.  And there are so many incredibly complicated relationships that in the movie were reduced to like a wink between two people or one line of dialogue.  But what can you do.  They could make a BBC-style 4 1/2 hour long movie, and I for one would be first in line, but I don't know that it would rake in quite as much $$$.  The end, though, I thought was great. 

 

Ok enough nerdiness for one day.  At least until somebody else who has read it comes to talk to me about it.