Friday, 8 February 2013

Edinburgh

January 1, 2013:
Our train left late in the evening from King's Cross Station in London, and as fate would have it, our train was leaving from platform 9 and 3/4.
On the train, we were lucky enough to get a full table to ourselves and the most delicious ham and cheese sandwich I've ever had in my life. Talaira read Life of Pi and I started a non-fiction called Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women. I haven't finished it yet, but it is about the Mujeres Libres who were an essential part of the revolution in Spain before World War II. I suppose it depends on what interests you, but it was such a compelling book. I was even inspired to write poetry...

When we arrived in Edinburgh, we checked into the Cowgate Tourist Hostel. It was the weirdest hostel I'd ever been to. The reception was in one apartment building and then further down the street there were other apartment buildings that served as the different floors of the hostel. Each floor had about a million doors, only some of which opened. The kitchen was the only common area. We were up four flights of stairs (with no elevator) which had broken glass scattered here and there. Of course wi-fi was only available in reception.

We walked around Edinburgh for a few hours in the dark with a free map and I was in love by the time my head hit my pillow.

January 2, 2013:
We had breakfast at The City Cafe and asked the perplexed waitress if the maple syrup was real maple syrup or just maple-flavoured syrup. It's no fun being a snob, but when it comes to maple syrup, I no longer take chances (especially not following the Amsterdam French Toast incident).
We spent the morning at the National Gallery looking at the Impressionist paintings especially. We also saw the Three Graces sculpture and Reverend Robert Walker (1755 - 1808) Skating on Duddingston Loch, which are supposed to be quite famous. The latter is by a famous Scottish painter called Henry Raeburn.
We climbed up the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle, in time for the One O'Clock Guns. We saw the Crown Jewels and the Stone of Destiny (unfortunately you're not allowed to take pictures of them). The Stone of Destiny glittered. After seeing the film about the time it was stolen from Westminster Abbey, cleverly titled Stone of Destiny, I thought it would just be a really plain block of stone, but it's actually a really beautiful (and massive) boulder.
We ducked into the Prisoners of War exhibit and took turns locking each other into the prisons before we stopped for lunch at the Red Coat Cafe. I took a children's portion and it was more than enough. Before heading back down to the Royal Mile, we just admired the views. We'd been really lucky to get amazingly clear skies and not-too-cold weather.
We spent the afternoon strolling along the Royal Mile, stopping in at the High Kirk of St Giles Cathedral (Kirk means church in Gaelic Scottish, which seems redundant to me to then add Cathedral, but what do I know about the church?). I skimmed through a book there about the Martin family and its clan. My mum's maiden name is Martin and my maternal grandfather's family comes from Scotland originally, even though they lived in Canada for generations before I was born. Apparently, the name Martin is linked to Mars, the Roman God of War.

We finished out the daylight hours with a glimpse of the Greyfriar's Bobby statue and Grayfriar's Kirk. Greyfriar's Bobby is the story of a police officer's dog; they never spent a day apart and when the police officer died an untimely death, the dog spent the remainder of his days sitting on his master's grave. The legend is that the ghost of the dog still haunts the graveyard...
One of the only places we felt the need to pilgrimmage to was the Elephant House cafe where Joanne Rowling spent some of her time writing the first few Harry Potter books. We settled in to write our postcards (feeling kind of suave and bohemian as we did so). Rowling obviously loved this place and we could immediately see why. It should be famous in its own right. Talaira, who adores elephants, was overwhelmed by the number of elephant statuettes in the restaurant. She wanted them all (which is not at all surprising). We ordered vegetarian nachos as a starter.
They were the best nachos I have ever had in my life. Our server was Canadian... a teacher candidate like me... who was unable to find work (surprise, surprise) and had been living in Edinburgh for about a year. I ordered After Eight Hot Chocolate and Talaira ordered Fleur's Fantasy Hot Chocolate (wonder if they were inspired by Harry Potter or the other way around!). These were also unbelievably tasty. For our main courses, I ordered a portobello mushroom burger with aioli and Talaira had the vegetarian lasagna.  This is possibly the best meal I've ever had in my life. I couldn't even fathom it's goodness and I wanted it to last forever. Even after we'd left, I kept replaying the flavours in my head over and over again. Thinking about it now, as I write this makes me want to jump on a plane and go there again. Which is what we did for lunch the very next day. The night was still young, however, so we stopped at the Edinburgh Filmhouse (home of the Edinburgh Film Festival) to watch Midnight's Children, a film by a female Indian-Canadian director, Deepa Mehta.
It was exquisite. When we got back to the hostel, we met this older Russian woman who, it turned out, had been the guilty party regarding the colonisation of the bathroom with random objects and who had taken over what seemed like two-thirds of the floor space in our hostel room. She lost her keys and asked us if we'd seen them and then basically put us in a situation where we had to wait until she'd found her keys (in her coat pocket) before we could go to sleep.... you meet some interesting people in hostels.

January 3, 2013:
Our next forray at the Elephant House for brunch included a baked potato with vegetarian chili, carrot cake and cheesecake. Mmmmm.
We stopped at the Holyrood Palace next, which is the Queen's official residence when she is in Scotland. It was really strange to see the rooms where she actually sits down to eat when she has official guests, etc. We also got to see the room of Mary Queen of Scots and several other royal apartments. The best part was the ruins of the Abbey, which are said to have inspired Mendelssohn.
We had an opportunity to see the interior of the Scottish Parliament buildings, but couldn't be bothered due to the need to go through a security check. Instead we explored the area around George Street and Charlotte Square, which unfortunately reminded us of how little spending money we both had. Most of the streets were surrounded by expensive shopping streets and we were afraid to be tempted. The Georgian-style buildings there were reminiscent of the buildings in Bath and were quite beautiful, but it was definitely not the student-friendly area of town.
 
For dinner, we went to Nando's which I originally discovered in Australia. It's a Portuguese/Mozambique-inspired restaurant. Talaira had a delicious bean wrap. I had corn on the cob, a quarter chicken and Pink Elephant wine. It was so strange to be asked for ID again after having spent so long in France. I think what I loved most about Nando's was the African artwork that covered the walls. Fully satisfied by our dinner, we went back to our room, packed our bags and got some rest before our next adventure.


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