(Being the continued adventures of:)
JANUARY 22 - 23, 2011
When I last left off, we were still continuing onward through the Old Town portion of our tour through Edinburgh. Here's the rest of it!
Deacon Brodie was supposedly the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde"
By daylight, was a very popular guy who did things like fashion furniture and make keys for people. However, by night he used his insider knowledge and locksmith abilities to break into the rich houses that he was actually hired to work for! Another fun part of the tale is that he was actually nominated to lead the search for the burglar! Eventually, after stealing thousands of pounds and having five illegitimate children with two different mistresses while still maintaining the life of a businessman by day, he was caught and hanged - supposedly by a gallows he himself built! Talk about irony..
St. Giles again
The Scott Monument across the way
Such neat architecture, and blue skies finally!
Mountains off in the distance
Part of the University of Edinburgh
Scottish Statue of Liberty..? Nah, just some famous guy. Nice beard though.
Have I mentioned that Edinburgh used to be known as "The Athens of the North"? Pretty cool.
Another statue
A neat walkway along the West Princes Street Gardens
Edinburgh Castle, with it's cliffs towering over the garden
Another statue
A cool fountain, with Edinburgh Castle rising behing
A church, on the outskirts of the New Town portion of Edinburgh
More churchs
New Town
Reminds me of a smaller, less busy London
Neat clocktower
Definitely a change from the old buildings of the Old Town
The Vat and Fiddle, where I enjoyed a very delicious fish and chips lunch and tried Haggis! (there's no way I can explain what it is, here's the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haggis)
Wasn't bad, even though it sounds kind of gross. Tasted a little bit like mushier meatloaf
Looking up the castle cliff-face
The panoramic from up on the castle wall. Amazing.
UPDATED: I just realized how crappy that quality is (it's the site, not me!) so here's a couple good shots in photo form:
There ya go!
Oh hello there. George Heriot's school in the background
Love those mountains
Edinburgh Castle! The construction kind of dampens the effect
Scottish army men. I liked their little hats
The entrance
Coat of arms
Inside the castle walls!
View over New Town from up high
KABOOM!
Before I get chastised.. no we didn't actually go into the main portion of the castle. They wanted £12, and that was with the student discount! Ridiculous.
Heading back from the castle, there were so many people playing music along the Royal Mile. Here we have a harpist and violinist. Not far down the road were several guitarists, each enough apart that their music could be distinguished from the others. Then there was the bagpiper from before! It was pretty neat
Oh yeah, here's the inside lobby of our hostel
I went out for a little walk before dinner and saw some cool places. I think this building is part of the University of Edinburgh
The Surgeon's Museum
A massive theatre called the Festival Theatre. I think. Pretty cool-looking from the outside.
The Royal McGregor, where we ate a good Scottish dinner! I had some sort of bacon and haggis-stuffed chicken breast with potatoes and veggies. A good hearty meal before a night out
So after dinner, we gathered ourselves and headed to the Bank Hotel pub to meet up with the tour guides for a pub crawl! It was a lot of fun! Plus, after paying the initial £11, you either got a free pint or shot at each of the stops, which was a great deal considering how many places we went! Here's how it played out:
Stop 1: The Bank Hotel.
Cool place, we grabbed our beers (I tried some Scottish cream ale that was pretty good - I wish I was better with beer names..) and hung around watching some football until we moved onto the next place.
Stop 2: Belushi's
A free shot of something blue at the door that tasted like kool-aid greeted us. After that, a train of Jagerbombs was set and you could join in for £2. My wallet was already feeling pretty light so I didn't, but they asked Jenny to start up the domino effect by knocking in the first shot - it was actually pretty cool to watch!
Live music was also a plus! I can't remember what these guys were called (it was something like "Ham and the Meatwads" or something ridiculous like that..) but they weren't bad. Singer/guitarist seemed like the only one who was into it. They played some decent covers. Love the Trainspotting wall poster in the back. Cool place.
Stop 3: Whistle Binkies
Looked a little shady from the entrance, but this place was pretty cool inside. Sweet music venue too:
Guitarist was insane. Chick lead singer was pretty crazy - sort of hoarse, scream-y voice when she sang, but she had like the highest squeaky voice when she talked. Weird. They were pretty good though
The bar. It was cheap to get mixed drinks so I had a Whiskey & Coke. As we left, we were handed our free shot of Scottish whiskey. That stuff will put hair on your chest, kids. Woah.
Stop 4: The Globe
HUGE projector screen for football matches. Love it.
Looking towards the bar from the side room with the huge projector. On our way out, we were handed another colorful shot. I think I got some green apple stuff. Pretty good
Stop 5: Frankenstein's
This place was nuts. We were handed a shot, in a test tube mind you, of some lemon vodka-y stuff as we walked in the door.
The bar
The dance floor
The random Frankenstein robot thing that they brought out and lowered towards the dancefloor. Pretty crazy! We grooved there for a bit before we, sadly, left for our last destination.
Stop 6: City
It was a club. And it was pretty bad. I don't even think I got a picture of it. We were curious about the Scottish club scene so we checked it out. Plus it was part of the pub crawl cover charge so what the hell. We get in and this place is a little under half full (I'm an optimist, I guess) of a mixture of teens and middle aged guys. The generic club music is pumping, then they bust out some random smoke machine and the whole place is engulfed. Needless to say, we lasted about three songs before we gave it up as a bad job and headed home.
By this point, I had gained two more roommates, and they were both American, from Minneapolis! Anyway, they were asleep, so I snuck in and hit the sack. So ended our first long day in Edinburgh.
Saw this on the way home - Dropkick Murphy's pub/club! I wonder if they got the name from the band or vice-versa or what. Crazy.
..
We had agreed to get an early start Sunday morning, so I was up and ready around 9. With the girls dragging a little, we got out around 930/945ish and decided on breakfast at our new favorite place: The Edinburgh Larder. Ahhh so delicious. I'm not usually a breakfast-eater, but if I had the money to do so, I'd eat tea (or in my case, hot chocolate!) and scones all the time. I had a scone with butter and jam and it was fantastic. We were all so happy afterwards, so we headed towards our first destination of the day: the Holyrood Palace. It's this huge mansion that serves as the place of residence for the monarch in Scotland. As we walked further east, away from the Castle, along the Royal Mile, here's some more of what we saw:
Some tower off in the distance
Love these streets
Neat clocktower
Another old, cool building
I think this is part of the Scottish Parliament..?
More of the Scottish Parliament. What a weird-looking building.
'The Queens Gallery' (no idea)
The starting point for a hike up to "Arthur's Seat". I would have done it, but we didn't have a lot of time, and I don't think the girls would have made it anyway haha!
The gates to the Palace
Pretty cool-looking place. Another rip-off though: £10 to get inside and see it. Unreal.
So once we decided we weren't paying that much for a tour, we made our way towards Calton Hill, a pretty awesome park/hill that overlooks the entire city.
On the way up the hill, another Robert Burns monument. They love this guy.
"The Athens of the North" indeed. The Scottish version of The Parthenon
Almost at the top! This thing reminded me of those torches that get lit on the mountains in the third Lord of the Rings movie. Pretty awesome!
The Nelson Monument
Then, one of the most amazing panoramas I've ever seen:
Amazing. From the start: I pan around from Arthur's Seat (that huge cliff on the left), over Old Town and Edinburgh Castle, cross over into New Town, pan across the city, and towards the Forth of Firth (Edinburgh's link to the ocean!). Simply awesome.
UPDATED: Again, sorry for the quality. Here's some of the good ones in photo form:
UPDATED: Again, sorry for the quality. Here's some of the good ones in photo form:
There ya go!
Also on the hill, the National Observatory
And the National Monument. This thing was actually pretty huge.
I'm on top of the world (read: Edinburgh)!
A last view of Edinburgh Castle before we head down
And this thing.
Oh, and this cannon too. Nice.
Once we were back down, we made our way through a bit of New Town before finding a bridge to take us back towards home.
Another awesome clock tower
More cool buildings
A different view of the Scott Monument (still no idea who Scott is and why he got a monument..)
From the bridge: aren't those buildings just amazing?! So old and cool!
We decided it wasn't quite time for lunch yet, so we took advantage of the free National Museum for a little bit.
Jackie Stewart's race car
Some mini cannons
Some of the Lewis Chessmen. There are more of them in the British Museum, but I guess I missed them when I was there..
Neat gold bird statue thing
Cast of the casket of Mary Queen of Scots
Some neat swords
A guillotine. I should be executed for how blurry this picture is, geez.
Napier's Bones. OK, these things were actually really sweet. They were like a 17-century calculator and could do multiplication and division. It was pretty neat, but I don't think I could explain how it worked. Google it.
So after our brief stint at the museum (we only saw 1/4 of it, it was pretty huge!), we went across the street to grab a snack at The Elephant House, the cafe where J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book!
Inside! Hmm I suddenly feel like writing.. something about wizards.. and a scar..
Well! After that, we decided we could catch the early train at 2:50pm - we had already checked out of the hostel, but stopped there to pick up our bags and made our way to the train station. Waiting around for our train, I grabbed some lunch and just reflected on the awesome trip and what a neat city Edinburgh was. Then our train was there, and once I was finally seated in an available seat (our tickets didn't have seat numbers, but apparently other peoples' did..? It was confusing, but it all worked out in the end once we just found unoccupied seats), the train streaked out into the cold afternoon, heading south back to England. As the train sped away, I watched Edinburgh fade away on the horizon. What a neat place.
Some farms in the pretty Scottish countryside. Goodbye Edinburgh!
And so I tucked in for the long train back to London - back to the busy streets, the loud people, and the crazy nights. Edinburgh was a nice reprieve, but maybe a bit TOO quiet for my taste. I like the excitement of the city - maybe not on the scale that London is, but something in between. Looks like I'll have to do some more exploring around Europe to see the kind of place I could see myself in down the road!
Good music to pub crawl to:
The Fratellis - "Flathead", off their album "Costello Music"
I love these guys. Totally thought they were from London until I saw they were from Glasgow! Great band
Good music for standing on Calton Hill, looking out over Edinburgh and towards the sea:
Frightened Rabbit - "Living in Colour", off their newer album "The Winter of Mixed Drinks"
I think I still like their first album better, but I need to listen to this one more. Still great stuff from one of my new favorite Scottish bands!
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Whew! That was a big update. Well, I'm almost caught up entirely. Not much else going on since then, so we'll see what happens!
Cheers!
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