Aug 24: Edinburgh Assorted, plus Glasgow

We awoke and ate breakfast at our hotel. Di Yin left for Glasgow (about an hour away by train) for a meeting; I had most of the day to myself before I was to meet her in Glasgow in mid-afternoon.

After dropping my baggage off at the train station, I began a series of walking tours that covered a wide swath of Edinburgh. It was a beautiful day, and the sights and pictures stood out much more than the previous day. These pictures capture the highlights of what I saw, but I won't bother in either the pictures or this post to mention every little spot I visited. Given the breadth of my exploration, I wish I recorded a walking map of my day -- it would look impressive and give a sense of the amount of Edinburgh I covered.

I first stopped by the University of Edinburgh's Old College to visit its art museum, the Talbot Rice Gallery.

Later, after hitting more of the University and two nearby parks, I stopped by the National Museum of Scotland, which covers Scotland's history. It's a large museum, and I was impressed by the scope and quality of its objects and the quality of its displays, but found the museum's building's design, with no natural flow, so disorienting that I quickly left. This is surprising and particularly disappointing, as the building was designed specifically for the museum.

Finishing my first walking tour in my guidebook and starting my second, I visited the Princes Street Gardens. Nestled under the cliff by Edinburgh Castle, these gardens are beautiful. I know where I'd bring my lunch every day if I lived in Edinburgh.

I found and briefly browsed a large craft fair by a church.

Then, I ventured north, into Edinburgh's New Town, which was designed and built in the 18th century. My first stop there was Charlotte Square, one of its main parks and with many notable historic buildings surrounding it. Just as George's Square (a park I stopped by in the morning) was taken over by a festival, so was Charlotte Square, this one for a book festival. I wandered through. I observed that the bookstore at the book festival was primarily organized by publisher. Interesting.

I rambled a bit far north of downtown proper to the neighborhood of Stockbridge. It was like downtown in architecture, but has fewer pubs and more regular shops and markets.

I then walked through the neighborhood of Northern New Town, consisting of long blocks of nearly identical (though pleasant-looking) granite buildings and similarly up-scale stores.

I trotted back to the train station, picking up a quick lunch on the way, and caught my train to Glasgow. In Glasgow, I needed to transfer from the Glasgow Queen Street Rail Station to the Glasgow Central Rail Station. This required a walk through downtown, mostly on Buchanan Street and other large pedestrianized streets. It's a nice area of Glasgow to see, and I wish all transfers could be like this.

In Glasgow, I met Di Yin, and we caught a train that would take us all the way back to London. To get back to London, we actually returned past Edinburgh first. heh. (This made my Glasgow excursion a bit silly.)

Anyway, the train rides were pretty; for the journey through Scotland, we followed the North Sea (and hence had water views) but even without the sea the vistas were appealing. We passed fields and fields and sheep and cows and Christmas tree farms and sea and other farms and more. In addition to my pictures from the journey, Di Yin also took some as well, starting with that one. If you're in slide-show mode and see pictures of buses to Scotland, you've cycled back to the beginning of her album and have exhausted all the pictures from the train trip.

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.

Aug 22: Getting to Edinburgh

My flights to Edinburgh were uneventful. I awoke before dawn to take an early flight from San Francisco to Newark. The only comment I want to make about this flight is that the baggage labels Continental Airlines provides has a list of reminders, one of which is, perplexingly, to lock your luggage. (The airline and the TSA require that all luggage be unlocked.)

In the Newark airport (where I transferred), I killed time by browsing the Met and the Smithsonian stores. In the latter, I found and read chapters of an interesting history book, How the States Got Their Shapes, about political disputes, surveying mistakes, and more.

I tried my darndest to sleep on my red-eye flight from Newark to Edinburgh. I constructed an elaborate head-dress to keep light out. My seatmate also helped! For example, she picked up my pillow for me when I dropped it so I didn't have to take off my mask. As another example, she saved me breakfast so I could eat it when I woke up. What a nice woman.

By the way, Continental Airlines's video entertainment selections are much better than American Airlines's.

Edinburgh Overview

I spent two days (Sunday, August 23, and Monday, August 24, 2009) in Edinburgh (pronounced eh-dinn-burr-ah), Scotland, before returning for my second stint in London.

Because I arrived on a red-eye and stayed only two days, I didn't have a great amount of energy and time to explore. My actions were unusual for me: for instance, I skipped some historic and cultural sites, neglected climbing a great nature spot, spent less time in museums than is typical for me, and took fewer pictures than normal, all because my brain couldn't absorb much and my body couldn't execute much, at least on the day I arrived. Nevertheless, I feel I got a fair impression of the city.

Edinburgh's a charming, small, hilly city. I found myself comparing it to Norway (Oslo and Bergen) and Quebec. They all have walkable, compact, cozy city centres, though Edinburgh's felt a bit larger. Due to Edinburgh's multiple-century-old buildings, all made of stone/granite (no wood, no brick), the city's Old Town felt like Quebec's Old Town. Furthermore, when walking around Edinburgh, Bergen, and Quebec, you can feel the character and history in the streets. Also, they're all rather green.

In fact, there's something a bit magical, a bit fantastic (as in fantasy stories) about Edinburgh: an ancient castle atop sheer cliffs, a lush garden immediately below, a historic town built of stone, and a great grassy rise ending in dramatic crags.

Although a coastal city, the main part of Edinburgh is far enough from the sea that one doesn't normally see it; it's easy to forget you're near the sea.

Edinburgh's famous for its numerous festivals, many of which happen in August. Our visit coincided with the largest and most famous of these, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and we saw a lot of colorful activities on the street because of it, but the only festival event we attended was part of the Edinburgh International Festival, a festival focused on the performing arts (music, dance, theatre, etc.).

Scotland, though part of the United Kingdom, calls itself a country and is self-governing for domestic matters. Some Scots, however, want independence. It constitutionally joined with England (to form Great Britain) three hundred years ago.

I'm not going to make a comprehensive list of places in Edinburgh I still want to see. I'll say that I'm mostly done with downtown, noting that I skipped or hurried through most cultural sites and museums, as well as Holyrood Park and Calton Hill. Aside from those, everything else I want to see in Edinburgh is a substantial walk from the center of downtown.