Edinburgh, Scotland

Scotland, to me, always meant… what? Heavy accents, kilts, bagpipes, and sheep. I can’t pinpoint the reasons these images correlate to Scotland, but they do. Even so, I surprised myself with shock when I saw a man in a kilt, playing the bagpipes on the street. And he wasn’t the only one! The more we walked, the more we saw – or at least heard their peculiar sound. How adorable!

I also give this man (and all the other bagpipers out there) props. He can rock a kilt and play this mysterious instrument to a T. His manliness rating climbs the charts in my book!

During our weekend in Edinburgh, which proved to be a truly fantastic city with plentiful amounts of royal and literary history, we came upon a quaint coffee shop filled to brim with influential power. The Elephant House. Not only home to hundreds of elephant paintings, pictures, articles, and statues but also a favorite inspirational spot for author J.K. Rowling. According to the shop, she spent day after day sitting in this cafe, turning her imagination into Harry Potter. I was hooked to this place purely from my new-found love and affection for elephants, but after hearing about its importance, I was swooning over it. It was as if I could sit down, see Edinburgh castle and the rest of the city out the very window this world-renowned author looked through, and find the words to my own book.

If only.

Although I couldn’t find the words to any book-in-the-making, I did thoroughly enjoy this city. With its hilly demeanor, there are numerous lookouts over the entire city – from Arthur’s Seat (a rough 800+ ft climb) to the castle’s hilltop and to Calton Hill on the far side of town – which in turn are excellent front row seats to a picture perfect sunset.