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Edinburgh in a Day
Yesterday, my program group took a day trip to Edinburgh, the capital of
Scotland. It had snowed and rained all day Friday and all night, and so
we were quite glad to get on a bus (even though it was 8:30 in the
morning) and leave town for some adventure.
I mostly slept on the way there (About a 3 hour trip) but I did enjoy much
of the scenery leaving Aberdeen and entering Edinburgh. Particularly,
leaving Aberdeen, there is this one little town, I'll find out the name
later, right on the North Sea and it's surrounded by cliffs and the waves
that head towards it are humongous, and it was covered by a surreal mist
that was all too Scottish, and it just looked beautiful.
On the way in to Edinburgh, we came upon the Firth-o-Forth, a firth being
a very large inlet from the sea. It was here that I saw the Firth-o-Forth
rail bridge, a bridge built for trains that is over 100 years old that I
believe my great-grandfather worked on or helped design; I'll get more
details about that too. Anyway, apparently they had built a rail bridge
previously but it, well, collapsed one day while a train was on it (known
as Somesuch Great Train Disaster of someyear). So, this newer bridge was
over-engineered by a factor of about 10 and is still standing quite strong
today. It did look over-engineered (at least to the degree that someone
like myself can sense over-engineering) but it was also quite neat to look
at and wonder what my ancestor had to do with it.
In the city of Edinburgh itself we took a bus tour around the old and new
cities, and then headed up to Edinburgh Castle, the big kahuna overlooking
the whole city. We, along with 120582350802 other tourists and their
cameras, walked around the castle for several hours. The high points were
the firing of the timekeeper canon at 1 PM, as they do every day except in
wartime and on Sundays, and seeing the Crown Jewels, a.k.a the Honours of
Scotland, a.k.a. a big fancy crown and some swords and a ring or two
encased in glass.
We split up a little bit more and a group of us went to a place for lunch,
where they served burgers and soup but not ice-water (you had to buy
bottled, hmmmm). Anna Palumbo and I walked around together for a while,
popping in the National Art Gallery and trying to visit the Georgian
House, maintained by the National Trust for Scotland as a representation
of what living quarters in Edinburgh were like in 1796, but closed to
tourists "for winter". Later we ate dinner at Hendersons, a very famous
and longstanding vegetarian restaurant (as my guidbook said, "not just
picking up on the new trend of vegetarianism, but a long standing
restaurant committed to healthy eating" or something like that) and it was
quite good.
We managed to avoid the Burger Kings, Pizza Huts, and Cyber-cafes
(particuarly difficult for me), but Anna and I did break down and go on a
ruthless quest for ice cream and milkshakes, with dissappointing results
of very small scoops of ice cream and a very poor imitation of a milkshake
at a local mall. I ordered a water from them too, and it was yellow. Now
I know why you should buy bottled in Edinburgh.
Unlike in Aberdeen, I noticed lots of homeless people wandering around,
either selling "The Big Issue" (the equivalent of "Street-Wise" in the
states) or settling down in doorways or museum entrances for another cold
night. It was interesting that, instead of playing guitars or saxaphones
on the street, some would dress up in kilts and play their bagpipes for
money, and I cringed when members of our group would have their friends
take pictures of them standing next to the "cute old Scottish bagpiper"
without even contributing to his money-pot; a great cultural moment
captured on film, completely ignorant of that homeless person's life or
struggle. Homelessness is quite cross-cultural in every respect.
The day went quite quickly and I did not have a chance to even begin to
see all of the sites I wanted to see, so I think I shall return for a
weekend some time when I have the chance.
Chris
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