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Black Medicine Coffee

 This post is mash-up of two days, Friday (the last official day of our trip) and Saturday (a half-day we had in Edinburgh).

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On Friday we got to check out Saint Conan’s Kirk (meaning church). This architecturally pleasing little building was built in the late 1800s  and is a mismatch of many different common church styles. The architect built it for his elderly mother, who could no longer make the trip to their local kirk, so that she could still attend mass… what a good son!

Saint Conan’s Kirk

Kirk Cat
Exploring the Kirk

We got to see another castle as well, Kilchurn Castle. This was an old fortress and is right at the end of Loch Awe, located on cattle grazing grounds. Honestly, the sheep and coos of Scotland live wonderful lives, they have so much space to roam and they really seem like creatures at ease. 

Kilchurn Castle on coo grazing grounds

Speaking of coos, we got to see some up close today!

Coo!

Coo!

Coo!

Coo!

We also stopped to see the Kelpies, a tourist attraction off the highway near to Edinburgh. These are two massive horse heads rising from ponds above a canal.

The Kelpies

And then we returned, marking the official end to our trip. I couldn’t be more grateful for such a wonderful and diverse group of people to spend the week with. 

Our MacBackpackers Clan

We weren't sick of each others yet tho! Half of us went out for Thai food the night we got in :)

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Today was our last half-day in Edinburgh and we took it easy. 

I started off the morning with a cappuccino from Black Medicine Coffee Shop. I had multiple people recommend this place to me and it did not disappoint! Maybe it was just because this was my first real, not instant, not drip coffee in two weeks, but my cappuccino was delish! And a coffee shop that doesn’t charge extra for oat milk will always win my heart.

Coffee!

We then decided to go the National Museum of Scotland to see Dolly the Sheep! She was the first mammal cloned from an adult cell (1996).

Selfie with Dolly

The museum was actually a lot more fun than we expected. There were some really cool interactive science displays that were lots of fun! This free museum is defiantly worth a visit, and if you’re not a museum buff then you can walk up to the 5th floor of the museum for a stunning panoramic view of the city.

View from the top of the museum

A fun fact I learned from the museum is that both pitch and glass are liquids! They will both eventually flow overtime. This flow can’t be visualized with glass, but you can kind of see it with a pitch drop over a very long period of time. 

Pitch Drop experiment started in 1902

We ate lunch at the Edinburgh University quad, a little green space in the city. It’s lovely that the university is right in the city centre, you can see so many young people and students wandering around the town. 

Edinburgh University

Tonight we left Edinburgh and took the train to Cockermouth, a small town in northern England. Now the plan is to relax and recoup, enjoying the English countryside.



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