May 7, 2010: Eating My Heart Out, Or At Least A Sheep's Heart Out

Today was my last day in Edinburgh, and also my last day in Scotland.

The plan today was to finish up some last minute souvenir shopping, go on my final tour bus ride, and try to view as many museums and art galleries as possible all before 5 PM (A.K.A. when Scotland shuts down).

My first goal was to purchase a specific item that could only be acquired at a specific location (and also apparently a secret location), some ways from where I was staying. This of course involved taking the bus all by myself for the first time since coming to Scotland. Fortunately, like most major cities (outside of Alberta) Edinburgh's bus system is excellent, and so I had no problem finding any number of buses that would take me to my intended destination. To be 100% honest though, I shouldn't say I had "no problems", since I cheated and asked the woman at the front desk of my hostel to look up the buses for me.

After a successful shopping trip I boarded the fourth of the four major bus tours of the city centre. "Why are there four tours?" I hear you ask. Well, one of them goes to the sea to take visitors to the Royal Yacht Britannia, one of them concentrates more on the New Town, north of the poop swamp, and the other two take more or less the same route, but one is run by a live tour guide, while the other tour is given by a recording in multiple languages, and has a "Spooky Stories" option for children. Today I used the "live guide" version of the latter two options, but I had trouble hearing over all of the Swedish, German and French tourists who talked the whole time. I wasn't too bothered though, as by this time I had heard most of the stories two or three times already.

After the tour I went to The Museum on the Mound, which is another name for the museum inside the headquarters of the Bank of Scotland. (It seems to be a trend in my travels that I must visit the National Bank's museum in each country I visit.) From The Museum on the Mound I went to the National Museum of Scotland. I had wanted to visit the Royal Museum of Scotland too, but it was closed at the moment and undergoing a 47 Million GBP renovation. (The Royal Museum holds artifacts from around the world, while the National Museum mainly contains artifacts relating to the history of Scotland). I had also hoped to visit the Royal Art Gallery, but it took me 3.5 hours moving quickly to not even finish the National Museum (I only got to the sixth of seven floors before the museum closed).

(At the top: the earliest complete surviving Scottish Firearm - the Breadalbane gun from 1599. To put things in perspective, the small gun on the white background is at least 12 inches long.)

(The Scottish version of the guillotine, The Maiden.)

(In the 18th Century some men attempted to go to University to train to become midwives. Naturally they weren't trusted, and so they sat in this booth called a Sedan Chair to give them respect since the luxury of being carried around on poles by others was typically reserved only for kings.)

(A horse drawn hearse.)

(Hand operated vacuum cleaner. It's probably still more powerful and effective than the vacuum cleaner at the climbing gym [inside joke].)

After a full day of sight seeing, I stopped in to my favourite pub on the High Street (Royal Mile) to have one last meal of Haggis, 'Neeps, and Tatties (sheep's innards cooked in sheep's stomach, with turnips and potatoes), and of course some Irn Bru with which to wash it down.

While I had meant to type all of this down on Friday when it happened and post it soon afterwards, my hostel had a massive party and so I couldn't access the "Wi-Fi room", hence the late update.

(Misc. picture: Edinburgh one-ups the tiny openings to garbage cans in Seoul, by completely boarding off the opening to this garbage can on the Royal Mile.)

May 5, 2010: In The Queen's Home

I stayed up relatively late last night enjoying the free Wi-Fi, and then again the next morning. Because of this, it was already lunch time before I actually got out of the hostel. This worked fine in the smaller centres, but Edinburgh is a big city and most of the attractions close at 5 PM, so this didn't give me much time to get around and see many things. That said, I was still able to take two full tours, and see both the Royal Yacht Britannia, and the Palace of Holyrood House. Before I started on my tours though, I first stopped in at a Turkish restaurant I had noticed was near my hostel the night before, for lunch.

Never having eaten Turkish food, I thought the Turkish meze option would give me a nice sampling of what was offered. The menu called the Turkish meze "a selection of Turkish appetizers." I'm certain that's what I received, but I was not expecting my meze to be a bunch of cooked vegetables that were then cooled so that they were cold. I'm not sure about anyone else, but when I think of Turkish food, I think of something similar to Greek food, which is to say I think of a lot of hot meats either in a pita wrap, or on a stick, not dry borscht. Oh well, at l east it was exotic.

(At least the interior is bright and cheery.)

(And what's this? Can it be? A closer inspection of the above picture indeed reveals hookahs!)

After lunch, I bought some unbelievably delicious vanilla fudge from the Fudge House shop just down the street some more, before heading back to Waverly Bridge to catch my first bus tour and see the famous Royal Yacht Britannia.

(Up on top of the bus, in the open air. When the bus is standing still this is quite pleasant, but at full speed it gets rather cold.)

(Some people sitting in the park beside Waverly Station, next to my bus stop. Unbeknownst to them, they are actually sitting in what used to be a massive river of human excrement that was drained to make this station.)

As I mentioned yesterday, the Royal Yacht Britannia was essentially the home of the Royal Family while they were at sea. They must have spent a lot of time at sea too, because the ship did more than 1 000 000 miles, or the equivalent of once around the world for every year it was in service. It was also the last in a long line of Royal Yachts, dating all the way back to the 1600s, since in 1997 the British Parliament deemed the ship too expensive to upkeep, and the Queen was forced to decommission Britannia. The Queen's loss was the public's gain though, and since 1997 the ship has been an open museum through which the public can take self guided tours.

(The binnacle and compass originally on board the Britannia.)

(The bridge of the ship. There is only one chair on the bridge, and only the captain of the ship was allowed to sit in it.)

(Looking out at all my adoring fans along the dock. Can you see the crowds who came to wave to me? I swear they were there just before I took this picture...)

(The main deck where The Royal Family liked to spend much of its time.)

(Me ringing the big bell on the main deck.)

(The girl on the left in this photograph is the Queen as a young girl.)

(The Royal Yacht's tea room, in which guests can spend far too much money for cake and teas.)

(I can't remember the name of this room, but the furniture was purchased by Queen Victoria, and Queen Elizabeth II had it brought from a previous Royal Yacht and placed here on the Britannia.)

(The Royal Dining Hall on the Britannia. It took more than three hours to set the twenty five places, and each place at the table had to be set using a ruler to make sure everything was in exactly the right spot.)

(A ceremonial pig killer the Queen received as a gift.)

(The huge on board laundromat. Each member of the crew had to change into a new uniform at least six times a day, and the captain sometimes had to change into a fresh uniform twelve times a day.)

After taking far too long on the tour (looking through a bookstore on my way there probably didn't help), I had to rush to get back into Edinburgh if I wanted to get to the Palace of Holyrood House before the last admission. I did make it though, which will free up some time over the next couple of days for yet more fun activities.

(The entrance to the Palace of Holyrood House. Because it is a government building I was not allowed to take pictures inside. This is the best I could do.)

(The second tour bus I rode today. This one was a classic bus with a live tour guide, making for a unique experience.)

(The back of the Scottish Parliament building.)

(These windows on the back of the Scottish Parliament building are called "contemplation windows". They cost about $28 000 each. When this building was first made, these windows looked out over an open field, but now they just look into the apartment next door.)

(When the very old buildings of George Street were built, the city of Edinburgh instituted a window tax. Each pane of glass resulted in extra tax being charged. Consequently, many house owners removed the glass, boarded up the hole, and just painted on the window instead of paying the tax.)

May 4, 2010: Edinburgh

Today I left Inveraray behind and headed to my last stop, Edinburgh. Rather than taking the more direct route via the motorways though, I thought I'd give my Astra one last workout on the windy A Roads. Unfortunately, as I headed west, I started to leave the mountains and lochs, and move more into farm land as I crossed the Great Glen, which is far less interesting to see.

Up until this point I had been staying in Scottish Youth Hostels Association (SYHA) hostels, because I felt it would be a good way to make the Hostelling International (HI) membership I bought in the winter more worthwhile (The SYHA is a member of HI, and as such HI memberships work at SYHA hostels). However, despite the friendliness of the people working at the hostels, there was a sterility about the hostels and the seemed more like a group of chain hotels than guest houses. In Edinburgh though I am staying at an independent hostel in some brick building in the Old Town, and it definitely has that "European" feel that one would expect from a European hostel.

For starters, all the rooms at the Royal Mile Backpackers Hostel are themed. My room is called the Fridge Room, and all the beds are named after different beers. There was a Guinness bed, Corona bed, Miller bed, and my bed, the Molson bed. Another room is called the Gotham City Room, and the beds are named after characters from the Batman comics: The Joker, Robin, Batman, etc.

I can't tell you much more than that though, since I just arrived, but in keeping with that absolute of hostel travelling: you will always meet a Canadian or Australian in every hostel, I have met both already today. Better yet, said Canadians are University students from the UofA (unfortunately my Alma Mater), and one of them was originally from Grande Prairie (small world?)

* * * *

For the first time this trip I arrived in at my destination in the afternoon and not the late evening, and so after checking in at the hostel I thought I'd go explore the Royal Mile outside my hostel. The Royal Mile is called the Royal Mile because on one end is the Palace of Holyrood House and the Scottish Parliament, and on the other end Edinburgh Castle. I'm going to see those places tomorrow though, so this time I was just trying to get the shops out of the way to make room for more important sight seeing in the upcoming days.

(My favourite sight in Scotland: vintage e-mail + text + phone booths.)

(A couple pictures of old, tall steeples/towers along The Royal Mile. I couldn't be bothered to learn the names of the buildings to which they were attached though.)

I had already suspected as much, but I can now say for certain that the Royal Mile contains nothing but overpriced souvenir shops and restaurants. It's the Itaewon (a street in Seoul that is nothing but a tourist trap) of Edinburgh. However, I did find a very interesting 3D movie documenting the history and "science" of trying to find the Loch Ness Monster. Then, after finishing the movie, I literally stumbled upon the entrance to The Real Mary King's Close Tour - one of the tours I had been looking forward to taking in Edinburgh, but did not know where to go to sign up for it, so this was a lucky break.

"Closes" in Edinburgh were the very narrow streets between the six to fourteen story buildings during medieval times. Mary King was a widow who, due to a unique loop hole in Scottish law, became a rich business woman/politician, and was allowed to vote and carry a gun back in the 1630s. It was such a great accomplishment that she had the close in which she lived named after her; the only time a woman has received this honour.

Some time later, when the government decided to build the Royal Exchange (now the City Chambers), rather than levelling the close it just built the building on top of it in the 1700s. Fast forward a few hundred years, and modern archaeological work discovered that the buildings and streets under the Chamber were still in tact, and after some restoration work, an enterprising company developed a tour to see the homes and streets as they were back in the time of the Black Death.

(The underground closes are considered a government building, since they are underneath the City Chambers, so I was not allowed to take any photographs. However, I was able to take a picture of this model which shows you that the new buildings were literally built on top of the old homes.)

It just so happened that when I arrived at the tour office, a tour was set to leave in ten minutes, and so I signed myself up for it. Our tour was hosted by an actor playing a "foul clenger," whose job it would have been to go house to house and take people infected with the plague to a special colony to die.

One of the more fascinating parts of the journey was when we learned the secret of the weird costumes the doctors used to treat victims of the plague. Dressing in an all black leather and a scary beak mask, and generally looking like the inspiration for the MAD Spy vs. Spy comic strip, was supposed to scare away evil spirits, the supposed cause of the plague. Nonsense to be certain, but ironically they actually worked, because the real cause of the plague was the flies that were attracted to the human excrement lining the street, and the all leather costume kept the flies from reaching the doctor.

Come back tomorrow when I take a double-decker tour bus around Old Town Edinburgh, and up to the Royal Yacht Britannia - the former sailing vessel of Queen Elizabeth II and the Royal Family.

April 25, 2010: I'm On My Way!

At 1:55 PM (Mountain Standard Time) my plane leaves from Grande Prairie to Calgary. From here I fly to Frankfurt, Germany, and then to Edinburgh Scotland. After roughly 10 days of delays, I'm finally on my way. Stay tuned for a review of my flying experience, including my experience on Lufthansa Airlines.