making my parents proud

Yes, for a moment I was THAT American...

my dead ancestors?

So while we were in the first the gnarly cemetery in Edinburgh, I was walking around reading each headstone. I had a strange urge to only read all the last names in the place, and I found one that stopped me in my tracks: Drybough. James Drybough, died in 1803.

Him and most of his family are buried in the same plot of land. I felt this strange connection to the grave, even before I read the last name. I am convinced that I’m related to him. My family has always said that our last name was at one point shortened from either Drybough or Dryden (two prominent Scottish surnames). I’m tempted to change my last name back to the original form now.

Hopefully I can track down my family in Glasgow and ask them about him.

a new understanding of rain

Holy crap… I thought I’d been in rain storms, but nothing I have experienced can live up to just the first one we got caught in on Day 1 in Scotland. We were walking to High Street (Royal Mile) in Edinburgh, and all of the sudden the blue sky disappeared to blackness and it started to just pour and pour.

We found shelter under a slightly slanted building, but it soon started raining sideways so we had to make a break for a covered sidewalk across the street. We waited it out under there with a dozen or so people for like 20 minutes. Then it let up enough to ‘normal rain’ and we walked down to Holyrood Palace. 

As soon as we got to the middle of a courtyard (aka, farthest possible point from shelter) it started to pour again! This time was even more gnarly than the first. We ran for cover under a glass overhand on the new parliament building. This time it was over an hour before it let up enough for us to walk around. After that ‘episode’ it never really let up for the rest of the day. It went down to a light drizzle at times, but it was constantly raining to a degree.

Like I said, so amazingly GREEN

Gnarly Cemeteries

These graveyards are awesome, but crazy. We went to one the last time we were in Edinburgh during a ghost tour, and I stumbled upon it again this time. It was just as scary as I remembered it, but I got to see more of it this time seeing that it was still light out and we weren’t in a rush to get anywhere. While I was walking around, I found a gravesite that stopped me in my tracks and has possibly changed my life… but more on that in another post.

Edinburgh

Coolest city… ever. We only spent a few there, but I’m in love with it. It was both our second times in Edinburgh (we’d gone as a family like 5 years ago), but at least I don’t remember it being this awesome. We walked all around the city, got caught in a gnarly rain storm, visited cemeteries, climbed hills, visited more cemeteries, got caught in an even more gnarly rain storm, and had the best breakfast meal (at 3pm) of my life… all in one afternoon!!! 

We got to Edinburgh from London in the evening, and that night we had a ghost adventure around West End. I found this sketchy path that went to the bottom of a small canyon and went parallel to a little river. It was really dark, and Janelle was really scared. I tried to be as confident as possible, but it was flipping spooky! I’d forgotten my knife in my big bag that I left in London, if I had had it I would have felt much more safe. The path dumped us out in some suburb, and it took us over an hour to find our way back to our hostel. This was at like 2 in the morning, not too bad but still late.

Our train out of Edinburgh wasn’t until 6:30pm the next day, so we had all kinds of adventures in the city (I’ll post about some individually later). The day started off raining, cleared up for a few hours, then dumped like no other, then continued to just constantly drizzle until we left. I LOVE IT. I’m obsessed with the rain, so I feel perfectly at home here. The clouds are unbelievably cool in Scotland, the sky in general is just awesome. You haven’t seen the color green until you’ve been here, it’s nuts.  Everywhere you look it’s green (except for the surprisingly blue sky, when it’s not raining that is). 

Edinburgh is awesome, but my one complaint is the amount of tourists that are there. I have to admit that I was one of them, but that was years ago. I’ve been mistaken as a local multiple times already, it’s the best feeling in the world. I can’t wait to see more and more local Scottish towns.