Author: Emma Hecht

Location: Edinburgh, Scotland

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

I don’t have class after noon on Tuesday or at all on Wednesday. So, for fun, I got on Kayak a couple weeks ago and just looked at flights that would get me somewhere and back in about 24-36 hours (Kayak’s explore tab is my best friend). What I found was a round trip flight to Edinburgh, Scotland for 19 pounds… that’s less than 25 dollars.

I got into Scotland around 7 pm on Tuesday evening, went to a pub for an amazing dinner of steak & ale pie and chocolate cake, and then headed to my hostel. I went to bed relatively early so that I could get up at 5:45 am in the morning and climb a hill/mountain/cliff, “Arthur’s Seat” and be at the top for the sunrise. I tumbled out of bed around 5:52 and began the forty minute walk to Arthur’s Seat. It was raining very slightly. It was also pitch black. Five minutes away from my destination, I reached a forest. Apple Maps thought it was a good idea for me to go through it, but I wasn’t convinced. So I stood and looked at it for a good two minutes, deciding if climbing a mountain was worth risking getting kidnapped. Then I saw cars passing on the other side of the forest and their headlights shed enough light for me to see that the forest was about ten trees on either side of a paved sidewalk. I crossed through without any threats to my safety and worked on figuring out where the paths were to climb up, using three feet of light from my iPhone’s flashlight to guide me. At one point I saw a distant light through the dark and I thought, “Oh wow they marked the path with lights, this is great!” But then the light started moving and I realized it was a person. (I concluded it wasn’t a murderer because murderers wouldn’t wear a light that drew attention to them.)

I remembered that I had a map on my phone of the different paths that there are to Arthur’s Seat, so I whipped that out and saw I was closest to the red path, which was described as a “very steep climb” and I thought, “a) it’s extremely dark out, b) it’s been raining, so there will be a good amount of mud, c) I’m wearing boots with very little traction, and d) I have very little experience climbing.” So, I’m on what I can only hope is the red path and I’m making all sorts of wrong turns on paths that aren’t really paths, until it starts to get light and I make a beeline through some grass that leads up to some peaks. I’m not actually convinced that I made it to Arthur’s Seat, but I made it to somewhere tall and it was beautiful.

After the climb, I went to The Elephant House, the café where JK Rowling wrote the Harry Potter series, or at least The Sorcerer’s Stone. I’ve loved Harry Potter since middle school (who hasn’t?) so that was pretty amazing. I had a cup of tea (as you do in the UK) and a piece of carrot cake.

I went to a few other museums throughout the day, including the National Museum of Scotland, where I saw Dolly, the genetically engineered sheep! My high school biology teacher would be so proud that I remember things from her class.

I was sitting in the Edinburgh airport, waiting for the screen to announce my gate and I got on Kayak and asked where they could take me for December 4th and 5th. So now I’m going to Oslo for 14 pounds. The train ride from Cambridge to the airport and back is going to cost me more than that.