Tom Riddle's grave and a failed pub crawl

Hello everyone, thanks for reading my blog!

This morning we woke up to a grey, cold, snowy morning. A few texts were exchanged and we decided to continue with our plans to do the 3 hour walking tour. The tour met at the Starbucks by our building, and there were about 50 people there for it. There were 2 tour guides so we split up, and our tour group had about 25 people or so (10 of them were from our group). Our guide's name was Ronnie, and he was great. It was a fantastic tour. It covered all the important stuff with humor and historical information.

Our plan was to take a ton of pictures but it was such a dreary day (and several people still don't have cameras as they are packed in lost luggage) that we decided to take pictures on a different day. I took a few (see below), then gave up.

We saw the inspiration for Tom Riddle's name (from Harry Potter). There's a famous graveyard (Greyfriar's Kirk) just below the windows of the Elephant House where JK Rowling sat to write the first few Harry Potter novels, and in the graveyard is the grave of Tom Riddle. There were graves with names of other Harry Potter characters too, like McGonagall. We also saw the original Hogwarts- the building that supposedly inspired JK Rowling (also visible from the Elephant House). It's a school called the George Herriott school. We saw a lot of great places, heard a lot of great information, and had a great time.

The City Chambers

The National Library and the oldest lead equestrian statue in Europe

The Castle

The window of the Elephant House where JK Rowling sat to write (and where we ate dinner the other night). It overlooks the castle, the graveyard, and the school.

After the tour we wandered around Princes Street for a bit (where a lot of clothes stores are), then went back to our respective flats to thaw. I did some reading for classes tomorrow, talked to people on Gchat, and hung out with my flat mates.

I went to the equestrian club pub crawl at 8. I decided just to go to the first bar and not to the crawl for a number of reasons that I will not mention here, but I had a good time at the first bar. I learned a lot about the club and the barn where they ride. There are about 150 people in the club, and about 50 ride each week. The barn where they ride is the barn where the British Olympic team rides apparently, so it's quite nice. The club has 4 competitive teams, and they're very, very good. I think they said they're the best in the UK. The barn is 40 minutes to an hour away, but that's the same as the barn at Wash U so I'm used to that. The thing I don't like is that the students at the barn tack up the horse for you, and untack them after the lesson so all we do is show up and ride. I hate that. It's really nice to have time to spend with your horse before the lesson and kind of get to know them a bit before you get on. I guess it saves over an hour of time but I want to spend as much time at a barn as possible! Oh well, at least I'll get to ride occasionally. I probably won't get to ride every week because there are so many riders, but I'm signed up for the first advanced lesson next Wednesday. Hopefully it goes well, but I'm kind of worried.

It's only 10 pm here so I'm not sure what I'm doing for the rest of the night, but I'm exhausted so I might just hang out here in my flat and try to get to bed at a reasonable hour. I have class tomorrow but tutorials don't start until next week so I just have 2 hours of class (at 10-10:50 and 15:00-15:50). Very nice.