Why thank you, Lord Rector

Today I enjoyed my first proper tour of the city, led by the Uni of Edinburgh's Rector (and prominent activist, writer, and geographer) Peter McColl, a position held in the past by Winston Churchill, Alexander Fleming, and William Gladstone. His tour was titled "An Alternative Tour of Edinburgh," in which McColl shared the more scandalous bits of Scottish history. In an intimate setting of only about ten students (and under some beautiful blue skies), I loved making my way around the cobbled streets, learning about the disasters and shocking successes sprinkled throughout Scottish history.

Here I am at Edinburgh's Old College, now home to the law school.
(For the six sisters: snood - J Crew, leather jacket - thrifted, silk top - boutique in NY, jeans - Primark, bag - Cole Haan, my uncle's old Ray Bans)

This is the Uni's "Old College," a beautiful quadrangle-shaped complex just steps away from my flat. Through appearing perfectly cohesive, it was actually built in several separate spurts of activity, as construction halted each time the city government ran out of money--such as during the Napoleonic Wars. The Uni of Edinburgh was the world's first civic university, funded neither by a Church or a benefactor; instead, it derived its funding from the people and the local government. Thus, the beautiful campus we have today was created, updated, and expanded whenever the government possessed sufficient funding. This notion of shared ownership is pervasive in Scottish culture, and it's one of my favorite parts of the Scottish identity.

The Meadows is a beautiful park just beside campus after which Central Park in New York was modeled. This photo captures only a sliver of the area-- it's truly massive.

The Meadows, which was once a swampy marsh, is now a sprawling public park filled with Uni students playing football, elderly couples walking their Beagles, and prep school students sprinting to class, textbooks in hand and striped ties flapping in the wind. Just to the right of this photo is some of Edinburgh's most expensive real estate, a block of upscale tenements (again, that idea of shared ownership). McColl explained that the builders had gained the city's approval to construct four-story tenements, but "accidentally" built a fifth story on top. The flats on the highest floors can now be purchased for over GBP 800,000. Talk about a profitable mistake!

The graveyard behind Greyfriar's Bobby, a pub celebrating the friendship between a man and his Skye Terrier.

Edinburgh is full of beautifully maintained graveyards, this one being of particular tourist interest, due to the love story between a certain master and his little pup (again, not a corgi, but I'll let it slide). The Terrier visited the grave of his late master each and every day for fourteen years, until the dog himself passed away. Legend has it, the daily routine had created such a stir about town that after the dog passed away he was replaced with another Terrier for a time to keep the tradition going!

A view of the sky from George IV Bridge, constructed to commemorate the King's visit in 1832.

Edinburgh is a bi-level city (making my job as a pedestrian incredibly challenging), thanks to some fascinating history I learned today. This bridge is in Old Town, predating the use of city grids, which were actually invented in the construction of Edinburgh's New Town. So in this medieval part of the city, there was no truly central area around which the usual business district-slum-wealthy area layered model could arise. Thus, instead of the rich and poor being separated by distance from the city center, the wealthy simply built on top of the poorer individuals' buildings. New streets and bridges were then constructed for this new, higher layer, allowing the classes to enter the same building literally from two distinct levels of town.

You can see this idea easily in the above photo--the buildings on the right side were the original level of the city, and the building on the left is plopped right on top of houses initially erected on that lower level. This practice has been going on in Edinburgh for centuries, so no one knows how deep these foundations extend beneath today's levels or what the abandoned layers contain.

St. Giles, known more properly as the High Kirk of Edinburgh, has been a prominent religious center in Scotland for over 900 years.

The religious history of Scotland is quite the sordid tale-- one I will perhaps save for another time ;) Suffice it to say that I couldn't resist taking another shot of St. Giles. This building is breathtaking, towering over the bustling Royal Mile along which it makes its home (a street actually 1.3 miles long-- "a true Scottish mile," McColl chuckled on our tour).

There remain countless corners of the city I hope to explore during my time here, but today's adventure certainly initiated a deeper familiarity with the city. Edinburgh, it's a pleasure to meet you.

And to all of you back home -- I miss you like the dickens!

Laur