The Wizarding World of Edinburgh

"Over the years I have observed that some attributes of leadership are universal, and are often about finding ways of encouraging people to combine their efforts, their talents, their insights, their enthusiasm and their inspiration, to work together." Queen Elizabeth II

This is a monumental time to be in Scotland. We arrived in Edinburgh on Friday, the same week the late Queen Elizabeth’s body was laying in rest here. The palace of Holyroodhouse where she was initially brought is only 1/2 mile up the same road from the apartment where we are staying. Her body was then moved in a procession down the Royal Mile passing right in front of our apartment headed to St Giles cathedral roughly 1/2 mile the other direction from our place. News of the Queen can be seen everywhere as they are preparing for her funeral on Monday in London.

Our first full day in Edinburg was a day of exploration and discovery. We slept in after our exhausting day of travel and found the apartment has its own eccentricities and discoveries. Scotland is known for be cold so indoor heating is a staple for homes. We searched every room in the house for a heater or thermostat. There wasn’t one. A small boiler was found in a little closet in the kitchen but as usual, no instructions. We were immediately googling the model and how to operate it.

There was an electric fireplace in the living room but we didn’t locate the remote for it until our second day. Once everything was in operation the place stayed toasty warm.

Heading out for our first morning we promptly found a small local establishment where we had a traditional Scottish breakfast. Similarly to Spain, we found that every restaurant we’ve visited had vegetarian and even vegan food options. This place even had a vegetarian option of their traditional breakfast which contained vegetarian equivalents of sausage, bacon and haggis. Since it’s rather difficult to find a kosher pig I went with the vegetarian version.

Mark and Jason opted for the “Eggs Royale” which was eggs on toast covered in smoked salmon, which was more ‘Jewish’ than what I had.

One thing we immediately recognized as different from Spain was the pedestrian crossings were back to being observed as safe "suggestions" as people were likely to sneak across at the wrong time when no traffic was approaching. One thing unique to these crossings were the little red or green symbol of the person walking, indicating when it as time to cross, are not located on the opposite side of the street as we were used to but the the light was located on the same device with the button pushed when requesting to cross.

Our first day we thought it sensible to take a walking tour of the city and since the Harry Potter books were mostly written here in Edinburgh we chose a Harry Potter tour of the city. The tour was lead by a spirited young man named Fraser who presented the history of JK Rowling and her time spent in the city.

We saw the cemented imprints of her hands at the city center and walked down the street that was the inspiration for the memorable Daigon Alley, a shopping area for the dark magic users in the story. The actual street not only resembles the story in description but also has shops that sell various related items including magic tricks, movie replicas and even a broom shop.

While perusing this street we were photo bombed by what appeared to be a crotchety and certainly unhappy elderly woman that happened to be passing at the precise moment someone took a photo of me. Feeling a bit ornery that day I cropped the woman's picture from mine and randomly passed the picture of her  using Airdrop to unsuspecting tourists passing by. 

A large part of the tour was in a downtown cemetery where Fraser went to various tombs showing names that matched characters from the story, including the primary arch villain of the story, Tom Riddle, aka Lord Voldemort.

The remainder of the day we walked through the city admiring the architecture and visiting shops. Although I tried my best to be prepared for the cooler temperatures here I had not done enough and I was determined to buy another jacket or hoodie. Literally, almost every souvenir shop that had any kind of clothing I was in there looking for something suitable. It was daunting task that I accepted. On most items the colors were wrong, the wording was wrong, the pictures were wrong or the sizes were wrong. I adopted this as my temporary calling in life, my noble quest to find the perfect Scottish garment.

Both Jason and Bryan had their own holy quests to locate items related to their Scottish heritage. Jason belonging to Clan Nickerson and Bryan to Clans Montgomery and Little. Likewise Mark also had his meaningful quest, acquiring the perfect refrigerator magnet. The remainder of day was pretty much a comedy of alternating Edinburgh attractions and store exploration. We located a good dining spot then entered a souvenir shop. We marveled at a cathedral and then searched the souvenir shop. We took pics of buildings and then browsed a souvenir shop.

The day ended without any of us obtaining our treasures but we did have a nice dinner at an Indian restaurant.