| Ian, Seth, Qarin, Robert |
Waking up the next morning seemed to go okay, though we did get off to a late-ish start--about noon. But regardless of the time, I was rested and ready to go do touristy stuff. :-)
I announced that at least I was going to go see Edinburgh Castle. Being a castle buff, I just had to do it. And it's a HUGE castle! And from there I figured I'd walk down the Royal Mile and see the sights. Eriq and Kristin, having lived in Edinburgh for six months, did see the need to go back and see the sights again, but the others did. So we tromped our way down to Princes Street Gardens and then hiked up the side of the crag to the castle esplanade where the Military Tattoo is staged.
Eric, it turns out, had seen the castle and didn't really feel the need to see it again either. So we said we'd meet him at 3:00 by the Tattoo Ticket Office (a van). And the rest of us set off to see the sights.
There are three options for seeing the castle: with audio tour, with guidebook, or with nothing. Though the audio tour was free, it queue for it was long, so I figured I'd just buy a guide. Not only could I keep it, but it meant that we could talk about stuff more easily.
And boy did we talk. I think that it would have taken a multi-volume history of the world to satisfy us. Qarin especially was always asking, "Well why did they do that?" and the little guidebook just didn't have the answers. We burned up half of our castle time just getting through the history bits while only going about 100 meters into the castle itself.
About this time we glommed on to a guided tour because it all sounds better with a Scot saying it anyway. He took us much more quickly through the rest of the more interesting parts of the castle, including the oldest building there--a small chapel from the 1200's.
After the tour we went to see the Honours of Scotland, basically the crown jewels. There's an exhibit there of how the Honours came to be, how they were handed down, hidden, recoverd, buried during WWII, etc. Pretty interesting stuff. There were also full-scale brass copies that you could touch and examine. Pretty neat.
We also stopped by the French Prison for a few moments to see Mons Meg, a huge cannon that was used as a siege weapon. It could launch 330lbs stone balls about 2 miles--pretty impressive. Turns out, though, it could only fire about once an hour--not so great. In the end it broke and was just dumped in a pit and left for a couple of hundred years.
We tried running around looking at some other stuff in the last few minutes we had. Qarin, Seth, and I went to the Great Hall, while Robert nipped off to the Scottish Memorial. The Great Hall had quite an array of armament on display--some of it pretty fierce-looking. But it actually wasn't much to look at in such a short period of time. The French Prison was more interesting--graffiti, good stories on the wall, etc. Supposedly during the hight of the prison, a good percentage of the counterfeit currency in Edinburgh came from the inmates who carved bone to use as stamps. There were also good tales of escapes, like the man who tried to hide himself in a dung pile. It worked, but he exited the castle with rest of the dung--over the parapets. Oops.
We headed back to meet Eric just a little bit after 3:00, all pretty hungry.
| Ian, Seth, Qarin, Robert, Eric |
Eric lead us off the Royal Mile to find some place to eat. His memory was a bit vague, so we ended up down on Cowgate in a not-too-populated section of town. No pub or anything. But after walking a bit, we found Grassmarket.
We had lunch (around 4:00pm) at a great little pub in the Grassmarket area called "The Last Drop". The choice was fairly random but turned out to be quite good. The place was pretty empty, so we plunked ourselves down at a table near the front.
The inside was kinda dark and the walls were covered with posters for the Fringe Festival. On our table was a little note relating how the pub got its name. Unfortunately, I don't have the note anymore, but this quote from Discover Scotland sums it up pretty well:
The Last Drop is opposite the site of the former city gallows in the Grassmarket. It takes its name from the fact that the last public hanging in Scotland was conducted outside. Just before hanging the condemned man, the executioner is reputed to have taken him for a drink here.
The interior of the Last Drop is decked out in the olde-worlde fashion, predictably enough. The noose-pattern carpet has gone, but there is still plenty of rope to be seen behind the bar!
They had a good menu, too. I had their steak and Guinness pie while Robert and Seth had some grilled rainbow trout that looked quite good. I must say that I think the pie was probably the best meat "pie" that I had in Scotland.
The waitress also introduced us to Calder's Cream, a Boddington's-like cream ale, with a nice, smooth flavor.
| Ian, Seth, Qarin, Robert, Eric |
I felt much refreshed after our dalliance in the Grassmarket, and it looked like everyone else was, too. So we headed back up to the High Street to begin the trek down the Royal Mile.
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| Investigating a Close |
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As we walked up Victoria Street, we came across two buildings with excellent addresses: 1 and 2 India Buildings. They were right in the middle of Victoria Street, but I would have bet that their official address is "1 India Buildings, Edinburgh". [It turns out that I was wrong. It's: "1 India Buildings, Victoria Street, Edinburgh EH1 2HE".]
That first walk down the Royal Mile is hard to describe now. I ended up walking up and down the Mile so many times it's hard to say what my first impressions were.
I remember that we poked our heads into a few closes to look around. It's certainly not a building style that we have in the US. I like the idea of having twistly little neighborhood streets with nooks and crannies. It's a lot more interesting than the growing American sprawl.
Some places to look for more on the Royal Mile:
| Ian, Seth, Qarin, Robert, Eric |
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| Cannongate Kirk |
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So as we were walking down the Royal Mile, Robert and I got a bit ahead of everyone else. We spotted a nice little church with some old-looking gravestones around it and decided to go check it out while everyone else caught up. [The church was Cannongate Kirk.]
Most of the graves were from the mid to late 1800's, though there were a sprinkling from earlier. Some had really bizarre inscriptions like, "This stone erected by So-And-So in memory of the Coal Hauler's Union." [I've actually got a picture of it somewhere.]
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| Adam Smith's Grave |
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When everyone else caught up, they told us that Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations, was actually buried in the graveyard. I didn't know who he was, but it turns out he's pretty well known for his pioneering work in economics even today. (Probably something that I would have learned in Econ 101, had I taken it.)
As we were leaving, we discovered that Adam Smith wasn't the only dignitary to visit the church. Most of the Royal Family, in fact, had been by at one time or another to plant a tree or shrub. Queen Elizabeth II planted a tree on her first official state visit as Queen.
| Ian, Seth, Qarin, Robert, Eric |
The Royal Mile ends at Holyrood Palace. I never got a chance to go in, but I wasn't that interested, really. (Palaces don't really do much for me--old castles are more my thing.) It looked very palace-like from the outside--nice grounds, and old church, well-kept buildings, etc. And it was very closed when we got there.
So we turned right and headed into Queen's Park where the Salisbury Crags and Arthur's Seat are. We didn't go up the Seat or the Crags because after a day of walking we were all too tired. (I remember that my feet were really complaining at this point.)
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| Mystery Rocks |
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We walked up Queen's Park Drive, which was toward the place where the juggling convention was going to be. We thought that it would be a good way of orienting ourselves a bit for the mad week of juggling to come.
Just at the edge of the park, we came on a small mound of rocks sticking out from the grass. This struck me as odd, so I climbed up the small embankment to see what the deal was. There were no signs relating at all to the pile of stones. They seemed to be stone-and-concrete with no particular purpose. One theory we came up with was that it was part of the old city wall. But that was just speculation. Seth enjoyed a different aspect of this knoll.
| Ian, Seth, Qarin, Robert, Eric |
From the knoll it was just a short walk to Medowbanks Sports Center, forum for the European Juggling Convention.
Registering for the EJC took a bit longer than I'd hoped. I hadn't pre-registered for the convention, so I had planned to just shell out the bucks when I got there. However I didn't expect to do that Sunday.
The sports center was a very industrial-looking sports facility-- lots of concrete, corrugated aluminum siding, ugly soft blue and dark blue paint.
The entrance was pretty well blocked by people trying to register or pick up their passes for the convention. Everyone else in our group had pre-registered, so they all got in one line and I got in the other.
Well, by the time I got the forms filled out and discovered that I had no where near enough money to register, the rest of the folks had vanished. So, what was I to do but try to find a cash point nearby? Off I went. I headed back toward town on the London Road. My feet were aching and I was pretty tired, but I figured that a cash point couldn't be too far away. I mean, in the US they are everywhere.
I found one after about ten minutes of walking--a TSB. However, it just spit my card right back out without even asking for a PIN. Oops. I tried asking at a shop nearby, but they only knew of the TSB. So back I went to the sports center.
When I got there, I got one of the People in Charge to call Seth on the PA system. It was their first day, so it took them a few tries to get the PA to work, but eventually it did. Seth showed up and loaned me £20 to finish registering.
After registering, I took just a bit of time to look around and see what was going on. The place was pretty large and they had three whole gyms set up just for hanging out and juggling. Two of the gyms were just sort of normal basket-ball sized gyms, but the other was much larger and included stands and the works. (Actually, one of the smaller ones had stands, too.)
We also took the opportunity to check out the Internet connectivity of the convention: four PCs acting as web terminals, securely (and frustratingly) tucked behind a firewall running WINGATE that crashed every two hours or so. But it was better than nothing . . . I think.
I'd say that we all got to know the computer room pretty well. The line of people waiting to check their e-mail was usually two or three deep, so there was a lot of waiting without much to look at. It was a typical drop-ceiling room. It has gross yellow paint on the walls and greenish or bluish industrial short-nap carpeting. Supposedly the room was normally used for yoga. There was a small dais or stage by the door. The computers were on tables lined up against the back wall. The door on the far side of the room was beat-up industrial light-blue. Usually there were one or two of the computer-flies hanging about. One was an annoying American girl who looked like she was doing the scrounge-your-way-through-Europe thing. She often talked at people who were using the computers, made big, big sighs every few moments while she waited for her turn, asked people frequently if they were almost done and then said, "Oh, I suppose it doesn't matter . . . [big sigh] I just want to surf." Ack.
| Ian, Seth, Qarin, Robert, Eric |
The walk back from Medowbanks was long. And we were hungry. And for some reason when you have five hungry people looking for a place to eat, it's nearly impossible to decide on one. I can't remember all of the places we looked at but I do remember stopping by:
We finally settled on a family-style Italian place. It wasn't bad--it was food. I got prosciutto and melon for an appetizer (on Seth's second-hand advice) and mushroom risotto.
Prosciutto with melon. Now that's an interesting appetizer. Unfortunately the one at this Italian place had prosciutto that was just a little bit too thick and melon that wasn't quite at its peak. It wasn't bad, but I couldn't decide whether I liked it for the taste or just because I was hungry.
The risotto wasn't bad, either. Very, very rich. I couldn't possibly have eaten the whole bowl full.
We walked back to the flats after dinner and everyone pretty much crashed.
My feet were so happy not to be used for a while. Looking back over my e-mail, it seems that my feet were really hurting this first day. It wasn't the shoes, which were (and are) great--it was the non-stop walking, which is something I'm just not used to. Being in Silicon Valley, where nothing is within walking distance, really gets your feet out of practice. It makes me with that I had to take a good long walk at least once a day. (But that's just me saying that now. ;-)