Day 10 - 12 - Edinburgh Region

Maybe I’m just inundated with Southern California’s too perfect weather, but Edinburgh seems like an entirely inconceivable city to me. Its situated closer to Norway than London, and it’s on the same latitude as the Hudson Bay in Canada. This means that in the winter they only get four hours of sunlight! Not that you can tell anyway, because it’s perpetually cloudy. If there’s one thing this trip has taught me, it’s that I’d never really experienced weather before. I saw three umbrellas get turned inside out in the course of ten minutes!
That being said, Edinburgh is an unbelievably beautiful city. The architecture is gorgeous and every street is rich with history. Robert Louis Stevenson got his inspiration for Treasure Island from a pond in a park across from his house, and the base for his character Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde came from an actual notorious man who owned a bar not far from Stevenson’s house. In the center of the city lies a formidable and grand castle, home to both ancient and modern Kings and Queens, that can be viewed from almost every corner of Edinburgh.
For a soon-to-be-senior like me, Edinburgh has an even greater attraction. The city is the home to the third best university in Britain, just after Oxford and Cambridge. It is most well known for Medicine and Engineering, and some of its alumni include Prince Andrew, Kate Middleton, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I will admit that Edinburgh, with all its history and grandeur, had always had an attraction for me, and that I’m still seriously thinking about applying to the University. Now I just have to get past the weather and the lack of sunlight. But if Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and millions of other Scots can do it, so can I! Reilly St. Amand '09