DSL: Deep Scottish Love pt. I

Whelp here I am, writing my second blog entry in a week!  That would be much more impressive if I had actually been busy (or at least been doing something that required showering) instead of laying in my pajamas watching hours upon hours of youtube videos for the past three and a half days. (Side Note: I wrote most of this a week ago before I went out of town for a few days.  It's not so impressive anymore that I wrote two blog entries in a week because I didn't post it until almost a week later. Oops.)  I also watched Braveheart, which is because I just got back from Scotland! Unfortunately, when you watch the movie after having learned the history straight from the Scottish horse's mouth, you learn it is incredibly inaccurate, and I being the history buff and general accuracy stickler that I am, I find it pretty unacceptable.  I still enjoy the cinematic quality of the film, even though a little voice in my head will still be screaming "He couldn't have slept with the Princess of Wales because she was only 10 at the time and didn't even come to England until after Wallace was DEAD!! Goddamnit Mel Gibson!" But that is neither here nor there.

So where was I?... Oh right, Scotland.  On the 30th of March I took a train to Bremen to fly to Edinburgh at 9am.  Having not slept that much and gotten up early I was expecting a nice day of napping before going out and finding a pub.  Unfortunately (or fortunately) for me, it was an exceptionally beautiful day, so after checking into my hostel and showering I took in the sights.  Before I continue onto the pictures here, I must interject to say that I did the New Europe free walking tour two times while I was in Edinburgh (obviously I recommend it), and also did a three day guided tour of the Highlands... so I've got a LOT of info crammed in my brain about Scotland and its history right now... and I'll probably be vomiting it all out here for you lovely people. Continuing:

The first thing I decided to do was ask the dreadlocked, pierced non-Scottish woman at the hostel's reception what she would recommend to do on such a gloriously non-British day.  She suggested Arthur's Seat, which is a big cliffy hill (I hesitate to use the word mountain) situated near the old town.  She gave me a map and told me to go to the Royal Mile and walk down to the end, take a right and simply "walk the footpath" up.  So off I went.

Upon leaving my hostel and making it to Princes Street, I turned right again to try to cut through a park, which I later learned was the Princes Street Gardens.  The Gardens used to be a lake called the Nor Loch, which was where the chamber pot matter from the old town above would run when it rained.  In other words, the Nor Loch was literally a big lake of shit.  They eventually cleaned it out though (would've hated that job) and make it into a beautiful park!  After hearing that story, I couldn't help but think of poo every time I went through the Gardens.

Edinburgh Castle on the hill, as seen from the former festering pool of bodily matter... part of which is now a graveyard, also containing bodily matter I suppose.

Can you see the sloping side of the lake? I just can't get over it. 

My first view of the Royal Mile.

One of the many "closes" aka alleyways along the Royal Mile. 

Scottish Parliament Building.  Yes, this is an unusual looking building, and yes, I tried to look up on Wikipedia if there was some sort of symbolic meaning behind the weird wood bits and gun looking things. All I could find was that the Spanish architect liked abstract things and tried to incorporate "Scottish landscape, culture and heritage" into the design.  Right.

 This is the part of the story where I take a right turn past the Parliament building and see my goal ahead of me: Arthur's Seat!  Now before you get too excited, know that I found out the name doesn't come from King Arthur, and in fact is probably just a bastardization of the old name "Archer's Seat" which doesn't make much more sense, but whatever.  If I learned one thing about Scottish place naming, its that it is always very literal (Nor Loch for example means "North Lake"... because it was to the north of the town).  This was probably where archers sat to shoot their arrows for some reason or another.  On a side note, the "footpath" that the hostel women told me about turned out to be the path just above the flowers/below the shadow on the hill.  It was much less of a "footpath" and much more of what I would call a "sheer rock face"... at least, that's what it seemed when I was trudging up extremely sleep deprived in a dress and flimsy boots.

The "top" or at least the top of the path I was walking.

Edinburgh Castle rising above the city.

Port of Leith in the background

After relaxing/reading/trying to nap at the top of the hill for a while I started to get cold and a bit too wind-swept for my liking and decided to head back to the Royal Mile.  Being the ever thrifty Fulbrighter I am, I always like to find free things to do when I travel, and as I was walking back toward my hostel I stumbled upon someplace called the "Childhood Museum" which sounded like a great anthropological discovery if I did say so myself.  And it was free! So I went in.  It turned out to be the sort of thing my nightmares are comprised of.

Please come play with us... we only want to eat your soul.

A doll made from an old shoe.  I still can't wrap my head around why. 

I command you to playyy with me.

Every kid's favorite: real-life butcher shop, complete with animal teets.

After being scarred for life I walked up the Royal Mile to the castle.  It's the city's most popular attraction and inside are a couple exhibition areas, the Scottish crown jewels and of course the STONE OF DESTINY!! (ooo, ahhhh!) You can learn more about the Stone of Destiny by reading the Wikipedia article about it HERE. Or if you're especially lazy you can watch the movie of the same name that came out a few years ago.  Either way it's a pretty big deal in Scotland and is reputed to be the reason why Tony Blair won the election in 1997.

Castle Entrance

Annnnd this was pretty much as far as I could go in without paying the 14pound (aka 17euro/$22usd) entrance fee. I think not.

Another view of the beautiful gardens that used to be filled with shit.  

On a side note relating to the former Nor Loch, or "Poo Pond" as it shall henceforth be called, there was apparently a lot of witch hunting going on back in medieval Edinburgh and when someone was accused of being a witch they had a spike skewered through their knees and their hands nailed to their legs before being thrown from the castle down the (very rocky) hillside into the Poo Pond.  If the person sank to the bottom, they were cleared of their crimes of "witchcraft" (which to be accused of you pretty much just had to be ginger), but if they floated to the top, they were assumed to have been helped by satan, confirmed a witch and burned at the stake.  You lose some... you lose some, I suppose.

That night I met some other lone travelers staying at my hostel and had a nice time at the hostel pub buying rounds, having rounds bought, playing pool, playing wii and basically having a good time.

The next morning a couple of us though it might be a good idea to check out one of the free walking tours available in the city.  We learned lots and got a great insight into the city.  In fact, so great was my experience than I did the same tour again 5 days later with different people I met!  But hey, it was free.

Edinburgh Castle looking up from the south side.  As I was made aware many times, the landscape of the city (aka the big rock in the middle) was formed by Ice Age glaciers (pronounced glay-see-urs). 

See that 3rd story window above the "NIT"?... that's the back of the Elephant House Cafe, where a certain Ms. Rowling would sit and write her books about a certain wizard, who would later become the basis for a multi-billion dollar enterprise.  

At Greyfriar's Cemetery:  Because of the huge amounts of body snatching taking place for fresh corpses to sell to the medical university, wealthy people would pay to have themselves buried under these steel cages so no one could take their body.  People who didn't have money would have to hope that a relative would sit over their grave every night for a few weeks (until the body wasn't fresh anymore) to fight off any thieves.  That's probably where the term "graveyard shift" came from. 

The tomb of the infamous "Bloody" George Mackenzie.  Reported to be one of the most "haunted" places in Edinburgh.   People who go up the steps or touch the building sometimes claim to get strange scratches and bruises, but I stuck my face right up in that window on the door and nothing happened.  

Area of the graveyard that used to be the Covenanter's Prison.  You can read more about it HERE, but basically they were people who were against the King interfering with how they practiced their religion.  They were persecuted brutally and often executed, by none other than "Bloody" George Mackenzie.

George Hariot's School next to Grayfriars, which was the inspiration for Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  It also is one of Scotland's most prestigious private schools and costs almost 10,000 pounds ($15, 800) a year to attend. I think most kids would have a better chance of going to Hogwart's.

Speaking of Hogwarts... This is the grave of "Thomas Riddle".  It is thought that a lot of character names were created while J.K. Rowling took walks through the graveyard. 

Statue outside the cemetery dedicated to Grayfriars Bobby.  He was a dog bought by one of the night watchmen to keep him company while he did his nightly cemetery patrols.  After the watchman died, Bobby would go to his grave and watch over it every day... for 16 years.  That's job dedication.

That tiny building in the foreground with the stake sticking out of the top used to be the main building in the marketplace.  People who stole would have their ear nailed to the door, where they would stay for 48 hours while people were allowed to throw rotten food and feces on them.  If they escaped they would forever have a deformed ear and be marked as a criminal, thus only being able to get work as a pirate at the Port of Leith.  Pirates usually only lived a few weeks after signing up.  Women would have to become prostitutes for pirates, an equally dangerous job. 

That's all I have for Edinburgh, but check back (hopefully) soon for Part II about the Scottish Highlands!

Until Next Time,
Chelsea