So, I landed in Edinburgh three days ago and met my doppelgänger at baggage claim. We chatted for a bit before being picked up by our Courchsurfing host, David. For this adventure, Robby and I decided to try Courchsurfing - a hippy/backpacker/freeloader website designed to help people experience the true culture of a city that they visit. You sign up on a Facebook type website, fill out your profile, and then surf the site for people that sound interesting to you, live in the city you want to visit, and are vetted by the website as non psycho serial killers. Since the site is "give and take", you must recipicate via hosting a weary traveler or volunteering yourself as a guide to show them your city.
David, a lovely single dad of a college kid, drove us to his country cottage where he'd cooked us an amazing meal of salmon, potatoes and salad. Complete with wine and beer. So far this Courchsurfing thing was looking mighty fine. Halfway through the meal he gets a phone call and says he has to pop out to pick up the other surfer staying with him. Ten minutes later we meet Jules, a Canadian that wants to get dual British/Canadian citizenship, so she's currently working in Scotland while waiting for a visa to Beligum where she hopes to live. She's been staying with David for months, she seems happy and healthy, so David is looking better and better as a host in our eyes.
All four of us talk into the night and the next morning David drives us the 20kms into Edinburgh, highlighting various sections of the city we should visit along the way. Our first stop is the Old City, it's 1000's of years old with a sordid past. While joining a free walking tour, Robby and I learned that the Scottish people should have all been killed off via the laws of evolution, but somehow they beat Death and are still here. Basically they had a bunch of kings that got killed in dumb ways -watching a cannon firing demonstration that was packed with too much gun power, being stabbed on a battlefield and asking the enemy to bring a priest for last rites but instead getting an assassin dressed as a priest, or a king being a hardass so the country decides to hang him for treason.
Then, during the 1600's, they had all these apartment complexes 15 stories high, so close together that they blocked the sun to the lower levels, and there were about 25 units per floor stuffed with 12-16 people per unit. Now image that these buildings weren't regulated in any manner for alterings- a shop keeper decides to add a door, they knock down a wall; a family wants to get rid of a wall, bye bye it goes; someone wants an extra window, sure, why not; etc. Now image that none of these buildings had center posts holding up the floors, just the four walls, some with a new window or door. Needless to say, Edinburgh was known to have numerous tenant building collapses. All 15 floors, 25 rooms a floor, 12-16 people per room, falling to the street in a giant clap of thunder. Of all the collapses, a lone survivor, an eight year boy hiding under his bed, escaped Death.
The people of Edinburgh were definitely used to death; the black plague, influenza, robbers and theives, Burke and Hare - famous murderers, premature burials, a bunch of stupid wars using the same fighting technique for 150 years still thinking all other armies would not remember their unquie fighting style and defeat it, a inbred family of cannibals, the list goes on. The fact that Robby and I are standing there looking up at these magnificent stone buildings and talking to a Scottish guide is a miracle.
After the tour we ended up walking The Royal Mile, it goes from the Castle at the top of Old Town to Holyrood Park and the Queen's Palace at the bottom of the hill, popping in and out of all the ridiculously priced tourist shops and spending entirely too much on yummy food because 25 pounds sounds reasonable until you convert it to dollars. Oh well, we're on vacation.
Another "interesting" history fact of Edinburgh is the waste disposal system. Edinburgh is a series of hills and stepped alleyways. At 7am and 10pm the citizens were allowed to throw out all their waste, that's been fermenting in the corner of their open floor flats all day/evening, via the window, and down onto the street below. Now, their waste, being a single bucket of human and animal biological waste, cooking byproducts, dead animals, etc, is all throw onto the ground where it slowly makes it's way down to Nori Lake, stationed at the bottom of Old Town and used for the city's drinking water. There the waste solidifies and creates a crusty shell above the water that the residents just scoop off before drinking...ewww! The other awesome fact is that all the street vendors, prostitutes, homeless people, and walkways were where the waste was dumped. Once the bells rang 7 and 10, you'd hear, "guardi loo" - a butchered interpretation of a French saying that meant "watch out for the water", and have about two seconds to find a doorway to hide or you'd not only be ankle deep in shit, you'd be taking a brown shower. And we thinking outhouses are gross.
Anyhow, the next day we got up super early to catch the lovely 6:35am bus to take us to the 6:56 bus that would get us into Edinburgh around 8am. We really wanted a head start on the day 'cause we'd learned that all the shops close by 6pm the previous evening. What we sadly discovered was that they do not open until 9:30-10am. Yep, tired and hungry we windowed shopped until a coffeeshop opened and invited us in. After a little caffine encouragment, we toured New Town, after 10am that is. It was built in the 1800's and is still amazing but not nearly as haunted and cramped as Old Town. There is a large hill near Holyrood Park that is called, "Arthur's Seat", based off the real King Arthur.
Robby and I decided that since it was rainy, freezing, and our King Arthur history tour was cancelled - due to the Queen of the UK being in town and deciding to throw a garden party (of which we were not invited)- we'd go hike a mountain. We meandered along random trails and ended up on a cliff that seemed steep on one side, the side we walked up, but was only about 500 meters from the street on the other side. Behind us was a giant hill with stairs leading up, but we decided our little cliff climb was accomplishment enough for us. It turns out that the large hill, that we didn't hike, was Arthur's Seat and we'd hiked to Salisbury Crags. Oh well, it gave us a great view of all of Edinburgh.
We warmed up in the new Parliment building they built that resembles a Gaudi masterpiece - various water, nature, and cross motifs worked into a modern art piece of a building with no straight angles to the walls. It definitely sticks out like a sore thumb next to stone buildings with terrettes, but for the oddness of the design it demands to be noticed. I dare you to google it and see for yourselves.
We enjoyed another lovely dinner with David and Jules and for desert, David gave us a Whiskey tasting. Who knew that whiskey is influenced by the waters and ingredient in the area it is made? Well, I do now and the whiskey's of The Isles are gross, at least to Robby, Jules, and me. It is made with tons of peat, giving the whiskey a smoky, earthy taste. To me, whiskey should not taste like it came from a campfire, but rather, it should be smooth and sweet like the lowlands kind we had next. The last kind we tried was from Jura, a small island in Scotland that has five distilleries. It was smooth, but Robby sweet, so taste like a pound of sugar is dumped into it. Robby is not a huge whiskey fan, so I ended up a tad tipsy that evening, but at least I only had to stumble down the hall to my blow up mattress.
So today, it was lazy day. Yeah, we've only been on vacation three days, but I've also managed to sleep 3-6 hours a night and when it's 9am here, it's 11pm in LA, so I've learned that the older I get, the harder it is to correct jet lag. We spent the morning wandered in and out of all the cute shops in Morningside, walking through a park with a weird golf chipping course, and drinking more coffee. I don't think I want to go back home, I will have to go back to drinking watered down, bitter muck instead of strong, smooth and sweet caffinated mud.
Anyhow, even though I promised myself I wouldn't step foot in a Starbucks here, I'm currently sitting in one of their comfy chairs typing this blog. Coffeeshop options are limited when everything closes around 6 or 7pm and you have an 8:30pm bus to catch. At least I'm only drinking chai, so I'm spared bad coffee. Anyhow, let me know what you all think of this blog and if there are any requests- aside from making it shorter, 'cause that's not gonna happen. I'll shall try to add photos, but I have to figure out how to add them to the iPad first.
Until next time...
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