This was the week my parents had set aside to visit, so of course the weather decided it wanted to be Windy Beyond All Belief. I’m more or less used to it, but my parents definitely weren’t. I heard all about it being cold. Which I guess it was, but not that bad.

Since I had people who weren’t on a student’s budget with me to pay for things, we went to visit some of the more touristy places you have to pay to get into.

First up was the Palace of Holyroodhouse, which is where the queen stays when she’s in Scotland. We weren’t allowed to take pictures of the interior, so I can’t illustrate just how much it was a place I would not want to live in. The whole place was full of the crazy amount of intricate detail and empty space that people seemed to think necessary to announce that, yes, these people are important.  The fact that the details are on everything makes the whole place feel stiff. Impressive, yes, but at the cost of comfort.

I finally decided to look up why there were so many images of unicorns around. Turns out its part of the Scottish coat of arms the same way the lion is part of the British coat of arms. I feel like I should have known that. Interesting detail (that I wouldn’t have noticed on my own,) the unicorn, when depicted as part of the Scottish coat of arms, is always shown wearing a collar with a chain attached. Because unicorns are dangerous. Scotland knows what’s up.

Right next door was The Queen’s Gallery, which had an exhibit about the tour of Egypt King Edward VII took back when he was Prince of Wales.

Of course what resonated most with me was the railing. Not the cool pictures or artifacts. That would be too normal of me.

We got to go the Viking exhibit at the National Museum of Scotland as well, though photography wasn’t allowed in the exhibit, so I, yet again, don’t have visuals. The two things that really stand out as worth sharing are 1) Viking is a verb and 2) almost all of our days of the week come from Norse mythology (Thor’s day being the most obvious example.)

And to round the week off we went to the Edinburgh castle.

So of course it had to try to snow. Edinburgh is like that puppy that’s perfectly well behaved until you have guests over.

Castles and palaces serve different purposes, and this was reflected in the sorts of things that were at the castle. Namely mostly military things, up to and including a military museum.

I send separate emails to my friends and family updating them about my status using mostly pictures with some explanation. The reason I keep those separate from this blog rather than just send people here is I tend to take creative license with my descriptions. This photo was accompanied with an entire paragraph explaining that the etchings are to imbue the sword with properties to fight against the supernatural. I didn’t actually read the plaque for this item, but I think it’s a safe bet that’s not actually the case.

Then I got myself an egg for Easter. Since I know little of the candies here, I relied on the tried and true “hey, that box looks cool” method.

The box is shaped like a lion. How could I not buy it? Also, they were out of the Maltesers eggs.

My mom brought me some Easter chocolate from the states as well, and after getting used to chocolate here, I can almost taste the wax. A friend of mine lived in the UK for a while, and now I understand what she was talking about.