Culinary Adventures (1/13)

I actually had two culinary adventures today, believe it or not. The first was for lunch, when I met one of the other Wellesley students, Hayley for lunch at The Elephant House, a coffee shop near the university. For those of you who don't know, The Elephant House is one of the coffee shops that J.K. Rowling frequented while writing the early Harry Potter books. From the looks of the view outside the window, you can imagine why:

(Sorry, I cheated a bit. This picture is actually from the last time I was in Edinburgh, in 2008. There were people sitting at the table in front of this window today, and I thought it would be awkward to lean over all of them to take a picture).

The other adventure involved... wait for it... the national dish of Scotland, known as haggis. Yes, I have officially eaten haggis, and I must say, it's not as bad as I was expecting (Of course the bottle of pear cider i had alongside it probably didn't hurt). It is traditionally served with neeps (turnips) and tatties (potatoes) and reminded me of the filling of a French meat pie when I forced myself to forget what it actually is.

Looks pretty tame, right? Not exactly what I was expecting - I thought they not only cooked the meat but also served it in the intestine, so this was a bit of a pleasant surprise.

However, the lovely Esther, my fellow Wellesley woman and parter in these adventures was not a fan. Between the two of us, we only got through about this much:

Ah well, it was certainly an experience that was necessary to have before leaving Scotland (although I wasn't expecting it to happen in my first week)!