Scotland - Part I

Here’s the trip report for Scotland. I made this trip solo as Kathi’s sister was dirt-ass broke and unable to go. Also, she had an invite to spend Easter at her grandmother’s house. I was also invited but upon weighing my options: Scotland or Kathi’s sister’s grandma’s house, I opted for Scotland.

Friday, April 6th

I arrived in Edinburgh in the late afternoon and I have to say, landing in a foreign country where they are native speakers of you language is a huge benefit. I went found an ATM so I could withdraw my money directly in Pounds rather than paying huge commissions to switch from Euros. I’m smart like that. After that it was on to the airport bus which deposited me near the Waverly train station. From there I caught another bus to take me to my hotel. I went up to my room and it was as tiny as the room in Portugal. It was cool though as I wasn’t going to be spending a whole bunch of time there anyway.

I left the hotel to scout my neighborhood and grab some food. I chose the Chinese place because it was near my hotel and I was able to bring the food back and just chill. There were only two other customers in the place and they left the joint before even ordering because the service was so crappy. The owner had the nerve to cop some attitude with them about it too. I’m thinking to myself, “look dude, there are only three people in your whole shitty restaurant, there’s no excuse for poor service.” I ordered my sweet and sour pork to go and waited for ages. I was excited when I did get my food and carried it back to the room. My mouth was watering when I opened up the bag but I was terribly disappointed. People make jokes about the meat in Chinese restaurants but this could have honestly been rat or cat or some other bullshit creature. The rice was shit (how do you fuck up rice?) and the sweet and sour sauce tasted like sewage. That’s how my first night in Scotland ended.

Saturday, April 7th

The next day got off to a really good start though. The breakfast at the hotel was no joke: two eggs with bacon, sausage, beans and a shitload of toast. After grubbing, I headed out to see the city. I my first stop was the area near the university. I also made a stop at Greyfriars Kirk and took a photo of “Greyfriars Bobby.”

Greyfriars Bobby was a little dog owned by some dude a long time ago. I don’t know exactly when but it was a long time ago. In any event, the dude died when Bobby was still young and he (Bobby) followed the procession to the dude’s grave and then dutifully sat on his grave for 13-14 years. The city council tried to kick the dog out of the graveyard multiple times but he always found his way back. Soon enough, Bobby became a bit of a celebrity and a military unit even adopted him and took him up into the castle to be the unit’s mascot. Bobby, however, escaped from the castle, ran down the crag and resumed his vigil on his master’s grave. Then Disney made a movie about him and now he’s real popular. Touching story though.

Anyway, I checked out the graveyard which sits on a hill. I later found out that the graveyard used to sit on level ground but the mass graves of people killed by the plague were so full that they had to bring in earth from other locations to cover all the bodies, hence the hill is actually an artificial hill created by the remains of thousands upon thousands of dead plague victims. Neat!

The other attraction at the Greyfriars Kirk was the tomb of Bloody MacKenzie, a dude that tortured and killed a whole bunch of Scots upon orders from England when they two countries weren’t exactly getting along. A bum broke into his grave some time ago and got the piss scared out of him and since then, the MacKenzie poltergeist has caused a host of problems. Google the MacKenzie Poltergeist or check out the Wikipedia site here.

After Greyfriars, I walked around the castle area and then headed back down to the Cow Gate and then to George Hariot’s School. I walked through the Meadows and took a bus back to the castle. There were a couple of churches there that I stopped off at before walking through the Prince’s Street gardens and over to Carlton Hill. From there it was down to Holyrood Palace.

This palace was pretty cool. It’s the place where the Queen of England stays when she’s in Scotland. A tour takes you through all the royal chambers and the salon where official/state events take place (such as the knighting of Sean Connery). You also get to explore Mary Queen of Scots former lodgings and the supper room where her advisor/lover was apprehended by the king, stabbed over 50 times and then left to bleed out on the floor. Ahh, the good old days!

After Holyrood, I walked up the Royal Mile back to the main churches and then the castle itself. The castle was awesome. There was a lot of history there and some pretty kick ass fortifications. There are also a couple of museums including one that has doors from hundreds of years ago. The doors were in a prison and have graffiti from former POWs, including some of the first known American graffiti. They used to take prisoners from the Revolutionary War there and one of them carved a crude picture of his ship flying one of the first representations of the Stars and Stripes into the door.

After the castle, I headed into the new town and just wandered around there aimlessly. I killed a good amount of time there then went back to my hotel to drop off some stuff before heading back into the city. I wanted to take pictures of the city at night but I have to say that as beautiful as Edinburgh is, they need to light it up a bit better because a lot of shit was just dark and dead after the sun went down.

The last real thing I did was take part in a ghost tour. It kinda hokey at times but there was a lot of good and grim information, even if the scares were lacking.

I finished up the tour and headed to a pub to get my drink on but there was nothing really going on (well, I was chatted up by a pair of girls celebrating their friend’s “hen night,” which means bachelorette party. I might have spent some time with them if one of them wasn’t an obnoxious land whale. Why are the fat chicks always the loudest, most abrasive shitheads?). I moved on to a pub nearer to my hotel and chilled there will a Stella to end my first full day in Edinburgh.