Day 12
Train from London to Edinburgh
Ever since I first visited Edinburgh on business in 2008, I have said that it is one of my favorite places on Earth. As we boarded the train, I wondered if it would live up to my memory.
This was not a particularly eventful day, but I got plenty of biochemistry done on the train ride. Our guide met us at the train station, and we walked to our hotel. Edinburgh was just as beautiful (and just as hilly) as I remembered it.
Key Moment of the Day: Our track record of being places on time was not great. So, I’ll have to go with the moment that all of us, with all our luggage, were safely aboard the train with plenty of time to spare.
Day 13
Walking Tour of the Old Town
Edinburgh is a mix of new and old, sometimes with the new being build around the old. It’s hilly and has many alleyways. The word for one of these alleys is a “close”. I can see why J. K. Rowling was inspired in Edinburgh to write Harry Potter. But more about that later.
Having heard that St. Giles’ Cathedral was “like the Vatican of the Presbyterians,” I checked with my Presbyterian source, Tom. He had not heard of St. Giles, but he did know of John Knox, who was the minister there during the reformation.
The toe in the banner image belongs to philosopher David Hume. He advocated empiricism and skepticism, but rubbing his toe for good luck has become a local superstition. I did not bother to rub the toe, but it did make for a good picture.
King’s Building, University of Edinburgh
We had an interesting set of presentations from researchers, including a documentary film. Throughout the whole trip was valuable to hear about the types of research being done. Each scientist who gave us a presentation seemed genuinely happy to share their work. I was especially interested in the research around Trypanosoma.
Then we got a tour of the Ashworth Laboratories’ natural history collection. I chose to take a picture of Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies, since they are a model organism widely used in biology research. After making my own Winogradsky column in microbiology lab, I was excited to see the mature ones they had in the teaching lab.
Key Moment of the Day: The Heart of Midlothian marks the location of the Old Tollbooth, which is the basis of one of the first Walter Scott novels I’ve read.