Aug 23: Edinburgh's Royal Mile

Di Yin and I spent most of the day in Edinburgh's Old Town along the Royal Mile, the famous set of streets (they change names over its length) that connect Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood Palace. Branching from these streets in Old Town are warrens of narrow passageways, usually called "close"s, often leading into small courtyards. They're fun to discover, and more common here there than London (which is notable, because they were common enough in London for me to mention them there).

I took a smattering of pictures this day. (As is usual when I begin a trip, it takes me a while to get into a photo-taking mood.) Happily, Di Yin took a lot, enough to document things we saw that my pictures don't cover. The link goes to her first picture in Edinburgh; when you see a picture with a caption about taking a bus to Glasgow (picture #132), you've exhausted her pictures from Edinburgh. Incidentally, it rained on and off throughout the day, which made the pictures perhaps less vibrant than they would have been otherwise. The weather variability was due mainly to fast-moving clouds.

My red-eye flight deposited me in the tiny Edinburgh airport, where I stopped by the tourist information booth, took the express bus to the city center, and walked to my hotel. In retrospect, I realized I could've gotten off at the penultimate stop and had a shorter walk that didn't involve hills. Ah well.

At the hotel, I met Di Yin (who arrived via an overnight bus from London), and we deposited our luggage and ventured out. We walked through Grassmarket, a recently-gentrified area with many pubs, to the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle. We approached the castle up to the point where we were required to pay, looked around, read the guidebook entry for it, and decided to move on. We actually ended up doing the same thing with a few sights today; it's an easy way to see a bit of something and prioritize where to spend more time.

We stopped by and wandered through the respectable National Gallery. The Scottish artists it displays are fairly good. Also, the impressionist collection includes the requisite names. Sorry, I didn't take more notes on the museum. Incidentally, there was a sort of market of street vendors near the National Gallery.

We also happened upon The Collective, an art gallery with an exhibit on the The How Not To Cookbook: Lessons learned the hard way (alternate web address). It's basically a large number of quotes collected by Aleksandra Mir about failed attempts and failed experiments at cooking. It's a mix of good advice, absurd lessons learned (why did someone think that was a good idea?), crazy accidents, and snarky opinions. Limited edition. It's so entertaining that I seriously contemplated buying it on the spot in spite of having to lug the encyclopedic tome with me the rest of the day, all the way back to London, and eventually back to the states. Read some excerpts! Here are two good quotes from the book (scroll down). Many more quotes, some erotic, are available. Or, if you want, you can read a sample of the cookbook or even the whole cookbook itself (which is available online now that the art exhibit is over).

Walking along the High Street (part of the Royal Mile) was fun because of quantity of performance art, mostly there due to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Many artists and actors were in costume. Some gave short shows (playing music, singing, acting, juggling, performing comedy, whatever), whereas others hawked large theatrical works, shouting "four stars" or "five stars" and either doing skits from the show or at least handing out flyers. It seemed as if every show got a four or five star rating from some newspaper or other. :) Incidentally, we also saw many bars/pubs/etc here.

We looked through a museum called The People's Story in an old "tolbooth" (the Canongate Tolbooth, actually a tax collecting house).

We also decided to explore the Museum of Edinburgh. Sorry, again I didn't take notes. (Can you tell I was exhausted?)

We gradually made our way east along the Royal Mile. There, in addition to a palace and the parliament, we found the giant rise of Holyrood Park. Wow! It looked awesome. (See the pictures.) I wish I had the energy to climb it, but Di Yin didn't let me take a nap yet, nor did she let me eat anything yet either, so I could not.

When she returned from climbing it, I got a chance to eat. And not just any chance. We found ourselves next to the Foodies Festival, a food festival that was happening in Edinburgh for this weekend only. What a fun surprise! We sampled a bunch of items, especially cheeses, ciders, and meats. We also sampled a Christmas pudding, a dessert made from tons of dried fruit smashed together, that was so good we bought some. We also saw some unusual food products, including Scottish seaweed.

To eat, I bought an Arbroath smokie pasty. It was okay. The insides were mostly mashed potatoes, with a little flavor from the Arbroath smokie (basically a special variety of smoked haddock).

We then returned to our hotel. Our hotel room was unusual in that it had a separate room for the toilet and for the bathtub and shower. I took a nap.

After my nap, we walked to New Town and began a hunt for food (dinner) among its pedestrian, pub-lined streets, especially Rose Street. Eventually we found a pub, ate, and then headed off to the dance event Di Yin had bought tickets for us for the evening.

The ballet The Return of Ulysses was about how Penelope (Odyssey's wife) denies suitors, then begins to give out favors as her resistance wears down / as her energy disappears. It had good dancers (from the Royal Ballet of Flanders company), and the choreography played off different ballet styles.

On the way back to the hotel, I noticed High Street was still lively at night.