Edinburgh

(My friend & the view from near the art galleries)

On Tuesday, my Religious Studies class went to London to attend the Global Student Forum on education and poverty.

My Religious Studies class...minus me and my friend (and also the lone male student, but he's never in lessons anyway). I'm not going to get into my teeny-tiny rant about the unfairness of the situation as it was based on drawing names out of a hat, due to the lack of places. Although there were enough places for the Year 13 girls (including my RS teacher's daughter), who took part last year, to go. And they went to the House of Commons. Which would not at all have been interesting to a possible politics undergraduate.

But anyway.

We got this really good deal on East Coast Mainline that meant we could go anyone on the line for £18 return. So, as we're pretty seasoned London vistors, we decided to go as far North as possible-ending up in Edinburgh.

I love Edinburgh. It's a city that is easy to walk around. It's beautiful in the Old and New Towns. And the people are so welcoming.

The New Town is really nicely laid out-you have Princes Street running straight down (for what seems like forever) where you have the high street shops including Zara, Topshop, H&M, HMV and Urban Outfitters. This trip was the first time I'd been into an UO as well, the shops are beautiful.

Behind Princes Street is George Street-being crossed through the middle by Rose Street (made up of bars and restuarants)-where hotels, and the more upmarket shops are. Oh, and Paperchase.

The trip along Princes Street ended with me owning two new Zara tops (I adore that shop), a dress from New Look and a pair of socks from Topshop (because to be honest, none of the stuff in there is really grabbing me at the moment).

We then headed to a very nice Pizza Hut for lunch, having already got coffee from Costa. I loved the Hut there, it was long and a lot more intimate feeling to the ones where I live. See also Costa, which was up a flight of stairs, meaning you could see Edinburgh Castle from the window.



George Street took us past Jack Wills (which I adore, but is stupidly overpriced) and into Paperchase, where we both bought new pencil cases. I'm a bit of a stationary geek and could spend hours in there.

We then crossed the bridge through the park to the Old Town, where we went up to the Royal Mile and got iced drinks from this cafe called Chocolate Soup (due to the failure of Starbucks to have anywhere to sit). I had an iced coffee, which filled me up fine, but they had some amazing looking cakes.

Edinburgh is a truly beautiful city, that I would love to visit more (if rail fares weren't so expensive normally).