Museum and Church

This morning I woke up nice and late (about 11), got ready, then went for a walk. I decided to take pictures of my route to class from my flat, so here you go:

I leave my building, turn right, and go up these steps to Chamber's Street:

After the stairs, I cross Chamber's Street (where the black car is), and go up that street straight ahead:

Then I go through this underpass (Wash U has an underpass too, so it's just like home...):

Turn right and go up this ramp:

Around the corner...:

And then I'm in the main square of the campus. To my left (not in the picture), is Potterrow, one of the student centers. To my right (in the next 2 pictures) is a big square. For classes, I just keep walking straight ahead:

To my right as I walk to class is a big square with McEwan Hall and...:

...Teviot, the main student building:

I keep walking straight and the Dugald Stewart Building, where I have metaphysics, is on the left:

Keep walking and Appleton Towers, where I have Society and Politics, is on the left:

A little farther down on the left is the William Roberston Building, where I have history:

So that's it for my classes, but I kept walking and taking pictures, so here are some more things. After I pass the big square with Teviot, George Square is on my right as I walk to class. It's a lovely grassy square, and this isn't a very good picture of it:

Around the corner of George's Square is the main library. The outside looks like a parking garage but it's pretty nice inside. The bottom floor was just redone and it looks fantastic, then the 6 floors or so above that are mediocre (and undergoing rehab). It's a really huge library. There are millions of desks for studying and computers, but I'm disappointed that there aren't comfy chairs to just sit and read, which Wash U's library has an abundance of. The cafe downstairs has them, but I didn't see any on the other floors. For pictures of inside the library, visit this website: http://www.lib.ed.ac.uk/sites/getting_in.shtml. It's a virtual tour of the library, and you can click through the different pages of pictures by clicking the link at the bottom of each page. The first couple "stops" are of the main floor which is very nice. Anyway, here's a picture of the outside:
Behind the library is the Meadows, which is a huge park. It's really nice. I'm sure when the trees are in bloom it's really pretty. There were people running and playing ball games and stuff when I went this morning. The whole back wall of the library has tons of windows that overlook the Meadows so that's nice. Here are a few pictures of that and a quick video:

After my walk, about 15 of us went to the National Museum of Scotland, which is on Chamber's Street. It's enormous and we didn't even come close to seeing it all. Here's a picture of half of it (there are 2 buildings connected, you can't see the 2nd building in this picture):

We split up into 2 groups and our group decided to take a free tour, which I thought was a helpful overview of the history of Scotland and some of the important stuff in the museum. I'll definitely go back there a few times to see more stuff, especially since it's free and like 2 seconds away from my building.

You can go up to the roof for a nice view of the city. Here are a few pictures from that, and there are more on my facebook in The Edinburgh Album:



After the museum I went back to my flat, ate, and worked on this blog post. Then later, Lauren and I went to church. We went to Charlotte Chapel, in New Town. The evening service is more contemporary and we chose that church partially because they have a program where international students can be set up to have a "host family," where they can hang out, get food, relax, that kind of thing. We really liked the church! I loved the singing and the sermon was good. It was very cool worshiping in a different country. I emailed them about getting into the host family thing so we'll see if that happens. I definitely want to go back to the church though, it was great.