This one goes out to all the lovers...

I woke up early. I drank extra coffee, so that I would be wide-awake. I put on my game face (um...foundation). And I wore my most comfortable pants. I was ready.
Ready for what, you ask?

Ready...for THIS:

This, my friends, is the Elephant House cafe, also known as the BIRTHPLACE of HARRY POTTER. Yes folks, that's right, J.K. Rowling deposited her be-welfared self right in this very same place to begin writing the work that would one day count only the Bible and The Corrections before everyone realized what a downer it was, as its rivals.

She may have sat right here:

Can you see the castle? Hogwarts, perhaps?

She may have ordered and eaten these things:

Hot chocolate and the famous bacon rolls

She...probably wasn't with my flatmate.

Coffee and bacon rolls are yummy!

But this is what she saw when creating the magical universe that we were soon to know and love so well:

Which...makes me wonder why there are emphatically no elephants in the books themselves. Anyway, Harry Potter aside (as if there is such a thing), it was a nice little cafe, where I had a very delicious breakfast before going on my quest through the entirety of the British Royal Mail bureaucracy. My package from my parents--MY PACKAGE--seems to have been misplaced and tomorrow I get to take a bus a hour to a shipping depot to find it, and if they think I won't turn that place UPSIDE-DOWN to get it, they have another thing coming. My mother said there's candy in that box. I wants it.

This post (the HP parts of it, anyway) brought to you by a friend from home, who requested this particular outing. Let it be known that I am now taking requests for things my readership (HA) would like to do in Edinburgh/Scotland by proxy. So if you've always wanted to see Arthur's Seat, now's your chance. If you've always wanted to try haggis or blood pudding...you might be on your own there.


Another palate cleanser (or, root canal, depending on your musical tastes):
Buskers in Scotland are different.