From London to Scotland, and Back Again!

For the past two days, I've been journeying around Edinburgh with Kendra, Dawson and Tasha, and I think it's made my appreciation of (currently) European culture that much stronger. If I'm honest, it's left me with a heavier heart that I won't be able to come back to Scotland; it feels a little stronger than what I'm afraid will happen once I have to leave London. That's nothing against London itself, but... I don't know, there's just something about Edinburgh.

This was one of the many views I could find in Edinburgh, just above the outer wall to the castle that stands at the city peak. It's cheesy to say, but it was like I could feel the soul of the city from up there, even with how many tourists and pedestrians are out and about. The castle especially, there were SO MANY Americans around. If anything, I think the Scottish were a minority in their own castle, which is a strange thing to think about. I suppose it's common around such large, imposing places. 

The castle blended aspects of itself like that often. The structure here is Edinburgh's War Memorial, with a short plot of flowers and shrubbery surrounding it. Within, it commemorates fallen soldiers of Edinburgh, distant and recent, and... I don't know how to quite describe it, but it's a feeling I've felt in the War Memorial museum in London too. There's a kind of respect given to those that fall in battle - or, worse, that are dragged into it without their consent - that I don't think we replicate in the States. Maybe it's because we have a shorter history as a secure nation than they've had, but it gives me a better understanding of how nation's look at patriotism (at least, in a way that isn't "God Bless 'murica").