1.) I’m sorry I never learned how to pronounce your name correctly. Friends had told me it was “Ed-in-bruh,” it’s spelled “ed-in-burg,” I also heard “Ed-in-burrow”… My name has been pronounced poorly (and consequently chortled at) for a long time, so I know how it feels and wanted you to know I didn’t mean any harm.
2.) I’m even more sorry that I did not give you the time you deserve. I should have booked an earlier flight from Dublin to take better advantage of (153). At another point, I was considering cancelling Amsterdam to spend the time here. For reasons that will later become clear to the third-party readers of my apology to you, I should have made that change, and for not doing so, I’m sorry.
…So, with that preface and these pictures in mind, let’s investigate just what it was I loved about this city.
Even more than Paris, this place makes grey look good. Well, to be more precise, the weather in Edinburgh is a win-win situation. Either it’s sunny and gorgeous (as it often was these three days), or it’s cloudy/foggy/raining (some combination of the three) and you feel like you’re in a gothic mystery novel set in the 1700s.
The only problem I encountered on this first evening is that nothing's open after 10. The pizza place where I wound up was fine, but definitely not what I was in the market for.
(154) is Wednesday, 9 June 2010
Breakfast, on the other hand, was the market. A full Scottish breakfast is like a full Irish breakfast, only they give you slightly bigger portions of everything, and a helping of haggis. Now, I’ve been through this debate with my future housemates and I don’t hope to convince them on the issue, but I would like to outline why I love this traditional Scottish fare.
Haggis is basically what’s left when a butcher has taken the typically desirable cuts of meat from a given animal (sheep, typically). These scrapings are processed in the same fashion as sausage and presented as a patty and treated with spices and other flavorings. This is the original budget meal; when you couldn’t get good meat, you made this. But, even when I can get okay meat, I get this along with it because I like how it tastes, I like the consistency in spite of myself, and I like that there’s a categorically adventurous food of which – for once –I am enamored and several of the people I know are skeptical.
Scottish breakfast was even more filling (better) than Irish breakfast, BUT… never order your morning orange juice from a bar. Especially not when you’ve been to Marrakesh recently. After eating, I left.
Hey, look! There’s the free tour of Edinburgh that Claudia recommended to me! Let’s spend three hours!
Actually, this turned out to be a really good idea. A company called Sandeman’s New Europe runs these tours daily in several major European cities, and it’s tips-only, so you pay what you think it was worth (which can be nothing—they’re totally okay with that). In my opinion, the best part was the means of getting my bearings without wasting a lot of time getting lost in places that don’t interest me (the downside of my beloved wandering tactics). To me, the stories and history are gravy.
Or at least, that’s how I feel about tours in other places.
Big reason #2 why Andy loves Edinburgh: This is a city that eats, drinks, and bleeds stories. As my tour guide explained, a lot of writers (including Robert Lewis Stevenson) have been drawn here. I imagine it was for the mood (and probably the whisky), but also, this city is full of great stories.
For example, one woman was relieved of her legally restrictive widow status by waking up after her own hanging and thereby exploiting the infrequently noted “till death do you part” loophole of marriage. She happily married the man who had been her lover in secret, and she wouldn’t die again for another 40 years.
There’s the source material for the original novel of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. A doctor — upstanding by day and debaucherous by night — abused his patients' trust by stealing their valuables with the keys with which they entrust him. Better yet, this doctor, a well-regarded citizen, is appointed head of the investigation committee to find the thief. The doctor has also, by this time, created copies of keys and a crime syndicate of underlings to accelerate their work. Andy the writer says: brilliant setup, especially when you’re the first person to make it famous.
And let’s not forget Greyfriar’s Bobby, the well-loved terrier of the well-loved night watchman of the Greyfriar’s Church graveyard. Cute little dog spent every hour of every day at his master’s grave for fourteen years after his master’s death: the symbol of loyalty and good luck in Edinburgh.
So, after-- … *Sigh*… Seriously? …All right, fine: the first couple Harry Potter books were written in Edinburgh as well… There, you happy?
I met a few travelers on the tour with whom I ended up exploring Edinburgh Castle. This is pretty much the big site in the city. One thing that gets me, though, is that the people running the place know that, and they know that you’d rather fork over an uncompromising 14 pound (there’s not even a student discount) than miss the place. In any case, it’s here you’ve got some incredible views of the city, some impressive and well-maintained ramparts, a few lovely chapels and memorials, and Scotland’s crown jewels: the crown, the scepter, and the Stone of Destiny.
And, yes, the story they told us about the Stone of Destiny is every bit as epic as its name.
There’s some history here that I should have probably started with, and I’m probably not going to do it justice, so I highly encourage you to do some digging of your own. Scotland and England have always had issues. Even centuries and centuries ago, when the two states were separate, England was always trying to invade.* It often succeeded, but Scotland would usually reclaim independence. Two such stories are those of William Wallace, otherwise known as Mel Gibson in Braveheart, and his more successful successor, William the Bruce. But, at one point, England succeeded and Scotland became part of the British Empire. Scotland has held a grudge about this long and less-than-friendly history. It’s, from what I’m given to understand, the basis of the sometimes less-than-friendly rivalry between England and Scotland today. But Scotland has made several significant strides recently toward independence, including establishment roughly ten years back of Scotland’s own Parliament.**
But a more symbolic stride toward independence was – around the same time as the parliament – the return of the Stone of Destiny to Scottish soil. The stone itself is, I would say, neither bigger nor smaller than the proverbial breadbox, but it is WAY heavier and imbued with an ancient prophecy: “Where this stone sits, Scotland shall rule.” Every historic Scottish king had his coronation upon that stone.
England took the stone at one point, placing it beneath the coronation throne in London’s Westminster Abbey. This did not sit well with Scotland. More particularly, this did not sit well with four university students in the 1950s who, during a wave of Scottish nationalist sentiment, got together for drinks one night and decided to break in to Westminster and steal back the Stone.
This is the setup for an actual heist movie that I have every intention of seeing.
ANYWAY, back to my narrative, I finished seeing the castle and went with my new friends over to another hilltop on the other end of the Royal Mile.*** The Royal Mile is where the National Monument (an unfinished attempt at a Parthenon replica) sits and you can take great panoramic views of the city that include the Castle, as well as Arthur’s Seat, the impressive-looking plateau to the city’s west. A few such images appear in the album.
My fellow travelers then talked me into joining a pub crawl sponsored by the tour company. Here’s how that one played out a couple hours later between me and the guy signing people up for the tour. With no quotation marks... because I don’t feel like using them just now.
-Hey! Pub crawl! Can I sign up?
-Sure! Passport.
-Passport?
-Passport.
-Can I put it back in my room after you check me in?
-No, you can’t put it back in your room after I check you in.
-So, I have to carry this vital and hard-to-replace document with me to a series of bars all evening?
-Yes, you have to carry this vital and hard-to-replace document with you to a series of bars all evening.
-Awww…!
-But we're not going anywhere you're liable to lose it. Also, pubs wanna’ see it, and the UK requires you to carry government ID at all times.
-So I have to carry it?
-You have to carry it.
Hey! No pub crawl!
(155) is Thursday, 10 June 2010.
I began today on an odd note, which was the purchase of a new pair of shoes. Not something I typically do, but I’d been wearing the old pair since early December, and with all the miles I’d been putting on around Europe, the fact is they were shot. I don’t usually like white shoes, because they do nothing but get dirty, but they were the best deal and I figured that, if they were going to get dirty, at least they’d get their start hiking to the summit and around the plateaus of Arthur’s Seat.
After buying shoes first thing in the morning, I got an especially good Scottish breakfast at The Mitre, a pub on the Royal Mile with great service and atmosphere. Yup… nothing sets the atmosphere of a Scottish pub quite like the group of four at the table next to you quietly enjoying their 2+ morning rounds of pints.
So, I climbed. Arthur’s Seat? More like ANDREW’s Seat.
And I don’t know whose idea that sofa was, but whoever put a seat on Arthur’s Seat is a genius… a genius with considerable upper body strength.
After my triumphant descent from that beautiful locale, replete with great views and fresh air, I bought the tasty title treat of The Fudge House on the Royal Mile. I tried a very good sample just up the street at The Fudge Kitchen as well. I saved it for later, though, as I was about to eat a (very late) lunch at World’s End, a pub on the Royal Mile. I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that everything you could want is there.
It is here that I tried Scotch whisky for the first time (someone explained to me that “whisky” is only Scottish when spelled without the letter “e”). I tried Glenkinnchie, a local brand, and I actually kind of liked it: a little sweet at first before the burn hits. I like the stuff with a burn to it… One reason is that – and I don’t know how I learned to do this with so little experience – but I can down it without flinching. Two, if I’m drinking something strong, I like to be reminded of it. It’s like there’s a consideration for contract there: I know I won’t go for too much without realizing it.
But the real appeal for this place is the food: the fish and chips on which I’d been going crazy were at their absolute finest here. For dessert (this place was that good), I had a chocolate cake with a molten white chocolate core and a scoop of vanilla ice cream that had the texture of being homemade. The description kind of speaks for itself, I think.
To top it all off, the service was great; my waitress was a lot of fun to talk to. We traded travel stories and Edinburgh stories, she told me how to find the University of Edinburgh where Yevgeniya and Claudia took classes****, and she held onto the headphones that fell out of my pocket for an hour until I realized and came back for them.
I spent the rest of the day wandering. On a completely different note, props to Edinburgh for being the only major city I've been to this year without some major attraction under scaffolding. I had to look really hard for two days before I found this:
It’s in one of the closes. A close is a very cool and mysterious stairway tucked into the buildings (and often covered) that links the Royal Mile to lower Edinburgh. As if I didn’t have enough reasons to love this city’s architecture, they added secret passages. Awesome.
I eventually found the University of Edinburgh, got dinner someplace I absolutely can’t recall, and packed for my departure the next day while listening to somebody performing “Johnny B. Goode” in a Scottish accent in a nearby pub.
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Footnotes
* --“Say, Brain, what are we going to do tomorrow night!?”
--“The same thing we do every night, Pinky…”
** Not that you’d identify the building as such, though: it looks like an art museum decorated on the outside with — of all the bloody things — bamboo.
*** The Royal Mile is the main street of Scotland, and yes, it’s about a mile long. My hostel’s on it, the Castle is at one end, and if you follow it, you come to the Parliament building. It’s also lined with several good taverns, official buildings, and many shops and kiltmakers. It follows the slope of the hill on which the Castle sits – Scotland was actually formed by a volcanic explosion millions of years ago: thus, its sloped design. Back in the old days, the Mile was the center of everything and people virtually never ventured outside the gates because you’d have to pay taxes for doing so. It expanded, however, when people without plumbing needed more (and more sanitary) space to live. Now, you’ve got a nice little spread of a town that’s walkable in terms of distance to cover, though not necessarily in terms of hills to climb.
**** I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this for the record or not, but Claudia Sanchez and Yevgeniya (a.k.a. “Jenga”) Sergeyenko, two very close Vassar friends (Raymond What WHAT!), were my motivation to come to Edinburgh. They both studied there in the fall and told me it was a cool place, so I figured I would see where they studied and spend a few days in a city where somebody could suggest things for me to do. I also spent a few moments during my stay pondering the irony of our being in the same places (Edinburgh and Vassar) at alternating times.
