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There is a dirth of trashcans ... dustbins, I guess, at the King's Cross rail station. I guess the British just don't throw things away. The Burger King at the rail station sells its goods in paper wrappers, bags, and cups, but it has no trash cans! I guess this may be a bomb thing.
The Flying Scotsman is the name of the train on which I now sit. The seats are tiny, both in terms of width and leg room. It is my fondest desire at this moment that no one sits next to me. The doors have closed and the train is leaving the station, but a few people are still moving down the aisles looking for the elusive Choice Seat.
The train stations in Darlington and especially York are beautiful 19th century glass canopies.
I assume this large body of water to the east is the North Sea. It is not smooth at all, rough like sandpaper to the horizon. Along the rocky/grassy shore are nice old houses and at least one trailer park.
lots of sheep, all with their heads down, many with tails wagging, moving slowly across the close-cropped grass...
With only a bit of hesitation, as there usually is when meeting a person you've never seen before in a public place, Julie and I left the Edinburgh train station and went to the lovely B&B she found for me on Mayfield Garden, the same street that is Mintos, South Bridge, and North Bridge as one goes back into the city. Then we went back to the Royal Mile. We walked up the cobblestone street toward the castle. This street is lined with tourist shops.
Julie made me spit on some heart in the sidewalk, I made her pose for a picture with a statue of a unicorn, and then we crossed a roundabout and started climbing the castle hill.
About halfway up the hill is the Camera Obscura. When I'd found in my web searching that there was one here, I mentioned it to Julie, and she found its location, as she also did with the whisky museum.
The viewing room is on the fifth floor (sixth floor to us yanks). The floors below held attractions almost worth the price of admission: some very old photographs, a gallery of pinhole photographs of the city (I loved this), and a fairly large collection of holographic images (which the anorak1 in our group loved).
It was overcast, so the camera obscura was not at full brightness, but it was still an astonishing display. A mirror in a tower reflects light downward through a lens system onto a concave white table. This produces a clear image of the view from the mirror's perspective of the area around it, which in this case is a great view. A control rod allows the guide to turn the mirror, allowing a full 360 degree display.
The presentation, which ran about 20 minutes, was lively, including descriptions of the sights and jokes.
Across from the Camera Obscura and a bit up the hill was the Whisky Heritage Center, a crassly commercial but surprisingly enjoyable celebration of this Scottish tradition.
The waiting area featured a pressed penny machine, so I knew this would be a good attraction. Julie had never seen one, so she got one, too.
We bought the Full Tour, which cost a pound or so more than just the barrel ride (more later), and it was well worth it. First a young lady in a long tartan skirt with the most adorable Scottish accent I've heard took us into the first room, where we watched a videotape describing part of the process of making whisky (which, when it comes right down to it, is the same as the process for making beer, but without the hops and with smoke and distillation).
Next we watched another video tape completing the process. Through a mockup of a big vat, we entered a small theatre, where we watched a slide presentation that proved to us that whisky is as integral a part of the natural order as fog on the moors and bagpipes.
Our adorable guide met us here and led us into a room with a haunted bar. No sooner had she left than an eerie transparent ghost appeared, drinking whisky and telling us about the blending process.
After he fled to avoid discovery, our guide returned and took us to the next segment of the tour, the ride.
Seated in a cramped but not painful car shaped like whisky barrels, we made our way through various two- and three-dimensional scenes from whisky's history. The most striking aspect of this trip was the simulated smells. This was immediately obvious when we passed the shaggy cow figure.
After we left the stinky ride we were given a wee dram of Cutty Sark and ushered into the gift shop, where dozens of different whiskies were available for sale. I drooled briefly near the 15 year old Laphroaig, but the 60 pound price tag was a bit scary.
Now full of a great love for whisky, we immediately searched for a pub (although, oddly enough, I was to drink no whisky during the remainder of my visit to Scotland).
(I did well, I think, in that all of the six or so beers I had in Scotland were indigenous.)
After a couple of pints and a couple of glasses of wine we had some fish and chips. They weren't bad, but Julie is still apologizing for them, assuring me that they were not representative.
Over my protests, we went to another pub, and then another, where I was forced to drink more beer.
We took a winding course by Princes Gardens back to new town, a route with great views, especially of the castle, that more than compensated for the amount of climbing we had to do.
During the train ride to Edinburgh I had done some research on my original plan to go to Inverness Tuesday, and Julie had given me even more accurate schedule information. Getting there and back would have meant a lot more train time and fairly tight schedules. I had also seen very little of Edinburgh. So I decided that I would stay there another night and save Loch Ness for another trip.
So Julie and I arranged to meet somewhere (I would call her) after she finished work on Tuesday, and I went back to the B&B to watch some more fascinating brit TV and crash (I DO love their commercials, especially at Tango Black Currant one in which a representative of the company offers to fight an exchange student who wrote a letter of mild complaint).
Love, Craig
Footnotes
1. For the non-Brits in the audience, the term "anorak" means, roughly, "nerd", or, more accurately, someone who takes their silly hobby much too seriously (as with computers). The term comes from the preferred outerwear of trainspotters. I think the American equivalent may be ham radio operators who have their call signs on their license plates and eight antennae sticking from their car, just so they can talk about the weather and how far away they are with distant people.
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