|
I got up bright eyed and bushy tailed Tuesday morning, ate my Traditional English Breakfast, and went out to catch the bus. Pretty much any bus would do, but first I had to remember which side of the road to wait on.
Mintos/South Bridge, before nine in the morning, becomes the path of a mass migration of walking college students. A few road the bus, but most of them were walking. The sidewalks were covered with packs of students. I liked it. I got off on Princes Street, where I purchased a few postcards and a guide book that I haven't opened since. I then walked along the garden. Edinburgh must be the most scenic city I've visited. To the southwest is the castle, standing majestically on its volcanic peak. To the southeast is (I think) Arthur's Seat, a group of tall, bare, and imposing hills. To the northwest is Calton Hill, with its big columns and other buildings. You can hardly look around without being impressed, especially in this early morning light. I retraced the previous nights walk in reverse, walking down through the park from New Town to Old Town, then through a cute little close onto the Royal Mile. After I'd caught my breath, I walked up to the castle. I actually have raw notes from the castle visit, but I didn't use them here. It costs money to get in, but the audio tour is free. You are given a sealed portable CD player with a CD-ROM in it and told to press "nine nine then the green button" to start the tour. Track 99 gives instructions for the use of the device. Throughout the castle area there are signs identifying the buildings (most of the castle is outside, open air). These signs have big numbers on them. These are the track numbers for the CD-ROM players. (The CD-ROM player also had an LCD display that showed some text, but I didn't watch it much. Occasionally I got an error and had to start a track again, but that was ok.) After the voice from the player identified the specified sight, it often gave the numbers of optional tracks, for more information about that sight or about mentioned events, like battles and sieges. In this way the tour could be as brief or detailed as the listened desired, hyperaudio instead of hypertext. You can find out about the castle at http://www.efr.hw.ac.uk/EDC/guide/edincas.html That's better info than I could do here. In fact, you can find out all about Edinburgh at http://www.efr.hw.ac.uk/EDC/Edinburgh.html After visiting the castle I wandered down the Royal Mile, just looking at the shops. At one I got a pressed penny featuring the castle and had them look up all my tartans on a CD-ROM. I didn't buy any tartan stuff, but I did get some Walker's shortbread. A small liquor (off license?) store on the Royal Mile had big displays of beer and whisky in its windows. Among the whisky I saw the Laphroaig 10 year old for £23.99, but, more importantly, the 15 year old for £25.99! I ran inside to make sure this wasn't a mistake and bought a bottle. It came out to $41 and change, decidedly less than the £60 I had seen it for on Monday and the $79.99 it costs in Rockford, and a scary $12 a glass at our overpiced but lovely Bar With All the Whiskies. (I am not misspelling "whisky". Bourbon is a whiskey, but Scotch is a whisky.) The store also had many beers from all over, including a big floor display of American Budweiser. In fact, Bud was probably the most common beer I saw on my trip. Almost every pub I visited sold it. Some also had Miller Genuine Draft, Rolling Rock, or Coors. I am not joking. This made me sad. It was almost lunch time when I made it to the intersection of the Royal Mile and South Bridge/North Bridge. I had a decision to make. While reading attraction brochures the night before, I discovered that there was a very touristy theme restaurant just a few blocks (ok, streets, Julie) from where I now stood, where I could get haggis for lunch. I thought about this for a while. I doubted I would like haggis, but I was in Scotland, and it seemed like something I should experience. In the end, though, I decided against it. Maybe I will eat some on my next visit. I had a pint at the Bank Hotel because it is listed in Jackson's Pocket Guide to Beer and decided to go to one of the pubs on Grassmarket of lunch. The map led me to believe that I could walk south and hit a street that would lead right there. Unfortunately the two dimensional map didn't show the 60 foot difference in the levels of the streets, so I went another block south and wandered by the Royal Museum of Scotland in the right direction. I settled on the Black Bull pub for lunch, since it had the most creative blackboards and cutest bartenders. Here are some of the poems they had on the boards: If you're hungry, do not quibble, "An Ode To the Bull" Signs on the loo doors once said "BABY CHANGING FACILITY" but now said "BABY HANGING FACILITY". Maybe I just live in too small a city, but I've never before seen the variety of novelty condoms in machines that I saw in the UK. This one had chocolate flavored ones, but I later saw fruit flavors and SCOTCH flavors. Flavours. Whatever. There was an Australian at the bar when I ordered my beer (McEwan's 80/ cask conditioned bitter, although I promise not to name every beer I had). He asked what the difference was between the 70/ bitter and the 80/. I said, "ten." The bartender agreed. He went on to say that he didn't like the beer here be cause it was warm and flat. He was drinking draught Coors, of all things. I hit an ATM after I left. If I may digress a bit here, it is absolutely true that using ATMs in the UK is not only incredibly easy, just like home, it also gives the best exchange rate. Forget traveler's checks; bring your cash card and have fun. I thought going to the Royal Museum of Scotland would be fun, so I headed back in a direction I was certain would take me there. Along the way I happened pon the famous statue of Greyfriars Bobby, a dog that sat by its master's grave for 14 years. The lobby of the Royal Museum of Scotland is white-painted iron columns and frames supporting a glass ceiling. It is very bright and airy. The first exibit was modern pop culture/lifestyle items...cars, shoes, telephones, toys, radios, computers, kitchen appliances, and so on. Next I saw an exhibition of extinct and endangered animals. The most memorable was a reconstruction of a Dodo skeleton. The museum piece that impressed me the most was an actual skeleton of a blue whale. It hangs suspended even with the balcony of a room that is a smaller version of the lobby. Unfortunately, there were no whale postcards in the gift shop. The clerk there wished they had some, since they would sell well. My treasured bottle of whisky was getting heavy, so I decided to catch a bus back to the B&B to unload before calling Julie. I arranged to meet her in front of a Burger King on Princes Street, wrote some postcards, and eventually left for the rendezvous point. I was early, so I went to the underground shopping center next to the train station. Apparently everything closes here at six, some earlier, but I did get into a record store and find the first Slingbacks CD single for 1.99. I didn't know the second single had been released, but I would make up for that later. When Julie arrived I gave her the single, since I already had two CD copies and one on vinyl. Then we walked back to old town and had dinner at a grassmarket pub. I noticed that at least two pubs on the same street now featured the American dish Chicken Kiev and reasoned that their frozen food salesman was doing his job. I had a bitter or two with the food, while Julie had half a lager. I think she was too embarrassed to order a shandy. We went to another pub, played some video games, listened to some loud and rude scotsmen, and called it a night. At this point I was still uncertain about where I would go the next day. Back at the B&B, I studied maps and train schedules, considering all kinds of places, before deciding to wimp out and go to York. Trains to london were frequent from there, it had a lot of sights, and it would mean spending the minimum amount of time on the train. Inverness would just have to wait for the next trip. |