Sooo lovely and sooo lovely to see

Yes, dear readers, I bought the sweater. I wasn't sure at first, but I am completely in love now.

In non-shopping news, have visited Edinburgh Castle, walked the Royal Mile (in two installments), seen the North Sea from atop the Castle, had a pint in a pub, walked until my cheeks are bright red.

I like this city. It's nice to be in a city that is easily walkable. London is a great city, but is not made for the random I'll-just-see-where-I-end-up walk. I did this a couple times, and while Fleet Street was mildly interesting, I saw a lot of semi-residential neighborhoods with no decent window shopping. Though, did manage to come across both the BBC and Reuters buildings, and that was really cool.

The British Library is also quite stunning (I went there intentionally). They currently have on exhibit some papers of Oscar Wilde, and a much larger exhibit of Sacred Texts. The ST exhibit includes many hagadahs, a Gutenberg bible, some Korans, and more that I just didn't write down to remember. I really love illuminated texts, and this love is one of the reasons I will return to Dublin (to see the Book of Kells). The design of the BL is very modern and really, really cool. If you're at all interested in architecture or design, definitely pop in for a bit.

Finally, am finally starting to feel that I'm in Europe. I've been here almost a week. At first, it felt like Just Another City (London). Though, anywhere the presence of Starbucks is great just doesn't feel like anywhere unusual. There are Starbucks in Edinburgh, but not in the vast quantities of London or Seattle. It also feels unusual to be somewhere where English, such as it is considering accents, is the national language.

Though, with the slang differential, and the broad accents of particularly the Scottish, it sometimes sounds like an entirely different language.