After a terrible terrible travel day (see my last post “Planes, trains, metros, and foreign languages”) my reunion with a friend from home in Scotland was a truly glorious occasion, complete with the golden rays of a Scottish afternoon sunset peeking through the windows of the Edinburgh airport, an epic hug the likes of which only my friend is able to give, and a final feeling of relief that I had made it.
It was the perfect start to a week full of good times with friends and Scots alike. Edinburgh is a thoroughly charming city, easy to feel at home in and explore. I could not understand every single Scotsmen, but on the whole I found them to be very welcoming and hope to visit again soon. Here are just some of the highlights from my week:
Arthur’s Seat: On the outskirts of Edinburgh’s city center are a series of hills and peaks. The tallest, which resembles pride rock from the Lion King, is called Arthur’s seat. My friends and I made the climb at the perfect time so we could see the sun set over the city when we made it to the top.
Tapas, Tea, and Haggis: I had a number of good meals in Scotland: Indian tapas, fish and chips, smoked salmon, homemade soup, and most importantly, haggis. If you are not familiar, haggis is a Scottish speciality cooked in a sheep’s stomach and made of oats, spices, and sheep heart, liver, and lungs. I felt strange ordering what I largely expected to be a mystery meat pudding, but that is what Anthony Bourdain did. So I had to. Description, name, and feelings after consumption aside, haggis is salty, hearty, meaty and quite tasty. It made me miss the type of breakfast sausage I used to eat when I lived in a country that valued breakfast (cough, France, not you, cough). I also respect the potential Scotsmen see in baked potatoes: they can be stuffed with everything from chili to shrimp, apparently.
Stirling: As much as I loved wandering around the cobbled streets and investigating the many closes in Edinburgh, I am glad my friends decided that we needed to see some real Scottish scenery and made the last minute decision to take a train to a small town called Stirling for the day. We got off the train with no real destination in mind and just started wandering the town and when that ended, the countryside. We ended up stumbling upon a really beautiful graveyard atop a hill, a castle, an abandoned abbey, a picturesque Scottish neighborhood, and when looking for a view of the valley, we found a William Wallace monument.
The Elephant House: I am a Harry Potter fan like few others are Harry Potter fans and was very thankful that my traveling companions indulged my desire to go the Elephant House. In the center of Old Town, Edinburgh, it is the cafe in which J.K. Rowling wrote much of The Philosopher’s Stone, the book that started the worldwide cultural phenomenon. When I asked my friends for “a moment” as I stood in awe of where I was, it was the coming together of a number of things. All the thank you notes to J.K. Rowling and quotes from the books scribbled on the walls made me think of how deeply I fell in love with the world and characters of Hogwarts when I was a kid. It was a strange but welcome surprise to have such feelings of nostalgia so far away from home. I was also taken by the fact that the cafe looked exactly like the cafes I like to go to write in at home.
I also feel I must give a shout-out to Bournville dark chocolate. The UK-made candy found in every Scottish grocery store we went to saved us on a number of occasions. Whenever there was a slow moment while we romped around Scotland, when our blood sugars ran low and “up-for-anything” attitudes fell, we bought and split a bar. It made everything immediately better. I plan on including “chocolate breaks” in all my future trips around Europe.
Other moments to remember include a whisky tour, tartan shopping, shortbread samples at every tourist shop, observing how Scotsmen have an obligation to make fun of the English, and finding a 60+ year-old Scotsman playing folk music in a pub like nothing else mattered.
