Finally! Some pictures

I had a long break today between my first class and a meeting with my Director of Studies, so after eating a quick lunch I decided to walk around the city and try and take some picture without looking too much like a tourist. Some of them, like the one at left are just of pretty buildings and churches around town. I have no clue what they actually are


This is one of the building toward the center of campus, I don't know much about it because our tour guide the first day was kind of a dud and a mumbler. In addition to housing some of the graduate programs (maybe) it's also where they host large campus events like reunions and such.



Walking on toward city center and the Royal Mile, I stumbled across the Central Library and the National Library of Scotland, which judging from the lobby is also something of a very impressive museum with lots of free exhibits. Definitely something I'll be investigating in the future. I poked around the Central Library a little bit and there was this interesting installation of tiles in the stairwell and also the engraving at the top of the front door says, "Let there be light"

Speaking of libraries...this is Teviot Row
It's kind of like the campus center and houses at least five campus bars including The Library Bar. I haven't been yet, but I'll try to provide a full report when I do make it.

While on the Royal Mile I went into one of the many, many tacky Scotland/Edinburgh gift stores. They had these beautiful lambswool scarves on sale for just a couple of pounds each. I went ahead and bought two because somehow in packing, I forgot to bring any of my warm, heavy scarves. Here's one of the scarves I acquired today:
It still kind of smells like sheep...hopefully I can fix that somehow. The other one I bought isn't as thick and is a very pretty sage green color. Other highlights of this store include: countless shirts and coffee mugs and shot glasses with cartoons of Nessie on them, miniature playable bagpipes (Daddy, I'm looking at you. Mom, how much will you pay me to not bring these home with me?), and when I was at the cash register I thought it was odd that they had Red Hot Chili Peppers CD's on display until I noticed they were in fact by the Red Hot Chili Pipers. Which is of course another matter entirely.