Monday, 20 October 2008
Edinburgh

Got into Edinburgh last night, after a long, long day of travel. After the end of the train line in Newcastle (which is far larger and suburban than I would have thought), we had to run to catch our bus to Edinburgh, find a loo in the meanwhile. Once we boarded the bus, we were tired and sweaty and hungry. And it was almost three more hours and one stop in Berwick (that’s “Berrick” to you) upon Tweed. We had to laugh because it’s true that the further north you go from London, the less intelligible the English is – full of heavy accent and unfamiliar idioms. When the bus driver asked at B upon T if we need to use the toilets, it took me until we were well beyond the point of that possibility to determine what he had said to me. Once in Edinburgh, we walked out of the train station exhausted and feeling very pack-mule-esque. I was stunned by the beauty of this city at night – it was like arriving at Hogwarts, all lights and castles and stone work. Hills and water and the color green one can only find in the British Isles, I think. The one thing that is difficult here is the lack of street signs in convenient places. We paced up the block and back trying to locate ourselves on a map to figure out which direction to walk and finally resorted to a taxi. The driver laughed heartily at us because the hotel was a whopping two blocks from where we stood. He joked that he could have piggy-backed us there faster (but I can’t recall the term he used).

Thistle Edinburgh is a lovely little hotel that is much more posh than I expected for the price. It came out to just about $100 USD per night, and the room is modern, has flat-screen TV, tea service, closet space, internet, and even heated towel racks. And it’s smack in the center of everything. I joked that you couldn’t get this room in London for twice what we paid here. I hadn’t expected much, either, knowing how hotels in Europe typically work out to be tiny and outdated and overpriced. On another general note, the food round Edinburgh is also quite surprisingly diverse and tasty.

We awoke to traffic noise about 7:30 a.m. and got up and moving for a busy day. Our first order of business was breakfast, and we stopped into a local coffee shop for a caff jolt and some fresh cherry scones with jam. Yum. And water. I’m so dehydrated even after the regular chugging of H2O. We walked through the center of town, and I remarked that my occupational hazard (the scholarship required to study the Middle Ages and Renaissance) is that I imagine all of the UK to be in a perpetual state of Medieval. Not modern, even though I consciously know that it is. It feels strange to travel to Edinburgh by bus on a major interstate, for example. I fully expect the road to turn to dirt and people to be pushing carts alongside. This place is also considerably more hilly and steep than I would have thought – I’ve had quite the workout in the last 24 hours. After breakfast, we worked our way on foot toward the castle, which is so cool and all by itself worth the trip. I can see why JK Rowling used it as her model for Hogwarts – it makes perfect sense when you’re standing in front of it. After the castle, we wended down the Royal Mile, which is cobbled and touristy, but still pretty cool. Trekked through St. Giles Cathedral, which I adore, and went into a few whisky shops and such. Can I say, though, HOLY WIND? I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Visited Mary King’s Close (all the remaining “closes” are really cool, too). Here is where things got a bit strange for me. It’s a tourist attraction and way commercialized as one of the underground sites – they try to scare you and tell you ghost stories and make loud noises, etc., but it feels a bit like an invasion to walk through there on a tour. Like you know you’re participating in something that isn’t being properly respected and it’s troublesome. So I went with it. In the livestock area, it’s a large room that would have been open to the sky above, but bricked over now, of course. Something about that room was all wrong and I couldn’t wait to leave it. When I left, I felt a hand on my shoulder and expected to find Sarah there but she wasn’t. No one was. I didn’t like that and it didn’t seem at all innocuous to me. In the room where people leave toys for the little girl named Annie who supposedly died there and is looking for her doll, I felt a wave of nausea wash over me and even my mouth got sour. I know that if I’d stayed in that room even one more minute I would have puked all over the floor. Sarah complained that when she went in there, she got an immediate stabbing headache like a migraine. Even after we moved away from the room the nausea waned, but I had to gobble some cinnamon mints to halt it entirely. On the whole, I’m glad I went there, but it haunts me a little even now.

While waiting for the Close tour, we had walked to see the Surgeon’s Hall and stopped into a great toy/comic shoppe called Forbidden Planet. They had dolls from The Goonies! Funny about this film is that I hadn’t thought of it in ages, but when we were talking about Hansel and Gretel stories in my class, I brought it up almost from random memory as a modern-day example of child heroes and fairy tales. I loved the film even though it’s campy and silly. Right after I mentioned it, the movie was on TV and I got to see it; the following week someone mentioned it to me in a completely different context, and then today, alas, a “Chunk” doll in a shoppe in Edinburgh. Weird.

We ate lunch at “Always Sunday,” which was a great little bistro type place where you can choose meal combinations and they are all healthy/nicely made. I had some herb bread with Scottish cheese, and a rocket salad with some tea and it was perfect. Oh, and some vanilla shortbread. Yum. From there we headed out to Holyrood House – the royal residence for the Queen when she is in Scotland. My favorite part was the remains of the Abbey that still sit beside the palace. The weather switched from sunny and clear to cloudy and rainy – any my favorite combination, the clear blue sky with rain (?) – all day long and started to get nasty as we left Holyrood. We had to trek back to our hotel in the wind and rain, which was intensely un-fun but short lived. At that point, naps were in order in lieu of afternoon tea. As soon as I got up, I stuck my hand into my cosmetic bag and took a rather unsettlingly large chunk out of my right index finger. It bled like a mo-fo and still hurts. I had to later locate a box of band-aids and something akin to Neosporin, and imagine trying to explain this to a clerk in a store in Edinburgh, where these things are called “cushioned plasters” and “Germolene.” Mind you, they are manufactured by the same company in both countries, but called something entirely different. I’m properly bandaged now.

Finally, we regrouped, cleaned up (I can’t tell you how the UK weather makes me feel like I’m in a constant state of slimy), and went for dinner at a pub called The Mitre, where the story goes that it’s named after a Bishop who fled Charles I’s religious imposition sometime in the mid 1630’s and was eventually executed. I’ll have to check my notes on that to be sure, however. Sarah had smoked haddock/potato/cheddar patties on a salad and I had pumpkin/marscapone/tarragon risotto – both of which were fantastic meals and especially since it was pub fare. Drank Caledonia ale. The literary pub tour – naturally – didn’t go on Mondays, so we made up our own. Stopped into “The Last Drop” (whose sign is a noose, and located in a former public gallows spot), “The White Hart” and one other I don’t recall, but we tasted scotch, encountered long-haired men in kilts singing along to Britney Spears (you think I jest…), and finally stumbled back to the hotel for a CNN update and showers.