Pulling into Waverly Station in the early afternoon and walking up a cobblestone hill to Castle Rock Hostel, carved into a niche in a stone wall that happens to be in the dominating shade of Edinburgh Castle, your mind flips through its rolodex of the places you’ve been before and looks for a comparison. London has its seeping history – that’s undisputed – but it also has its crowds and its modern buildings and its traffic lights and its burgeoning capitalism. All the yuppies running around as if someone’s pushing them. Not that I’m throwing London under the bus here or anything, but the old section of Edinburgh, basically contained within Princes Street and High Street with Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace serving as bookends, felt completely removed from that mindset – like it’s a city that’s quite capable of existing in the past because it works, not because it’s gimmicky.
Ok, it can be a bit gimmicky at times
The eleven of us that went to Scotland this weekend were only there for about 48 hours, hardly enough time to get an authentic feel for the city, let alone the country. All this can be is a glimpse.
Loch Ness, the Highlands, ruined castles dotting the countryside . . . of course there’s a list of things that I would have loved to have experienced, if I had the time. That’s not the point, though – if I had a chance to redo the trip, the pictures that I would post on Facebook from this hypothetical trip would look pretty similar to the ones from the past weekend. If I chose to do something different, it wouldn’t have been a better adventure.
But I digress. Let’s get back on track; Edinburgh is one of the most gorgeous cities I’ve ever been in.
We left for Scotland on the 9:30 train out of King’s Cross Station in London, which meant getting up, bleary eyed, around 5:30 in Harlow (we got back to the Maltings from London after midnight the evening before). I always feel bummed out, starting a trip before the sun comes up; I know that’s a first world problem that’s too petty to even mention, but it really does mess with your internal clock and plays tricks with your mood. It was a slow morning of getting into London and taking the tubes from Liverpool Street, but by the time we got to King’s Cross – with about an hour until we had to board – the sun was up and the jittery excitement was back on track.
Heading north from London, cities started taking on stone facades, hills started to weave their way along the coast of the Atlantic, and sheep started lining the tracks in uncomfortable numbers. Hundreds. Just hanging out, waiting. An American woman who figured her neighbourhood in West Philadelphia (probably where Will Smith was born and raised) was safe (even though people occasionally got shot there) tried to give me some life advice on the way – hah! joke’s on her, I’m too stubborn to listen. She bailed in Durham, giving just enough time to shake off the what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up-and-bear-in-mind-the-economy-sucks mindset and get into the we’re-in-Scotland-let’s-have-a-few-onboard-beer-and-look-at-sheep mindset.
Once we pulled into the station and grabbed our bags, it was a short walk to Castle Rock Hostel, where we quickly filled up small reception area and had to squeeze around each other to pay our meagre £14 and get orange passes to let us into the living area. Because of renovations, there was no hot water at that point; let the hipster-vagabond lifestyle begin.
The building was surprisingly large, with a full kitchen and multiple common areas, and full of people from all over the world; we had a single room between us all (plus two other random girls who we inevitably scarred by the time they left on Sunday morning), on the bottom floor, and shared a bathroom with a few other rooms. “Edinburgh Pubs” was our room, with each bed named after a watering hole in the city.
Self-fulfilling prophecy? Kinda, but more on that later.
We made up our minds to get a move on as soon as we could. Popped into a tourist shop that was prepared to convince you that, if you went back to Canada wearing a kilt, people would totally respect you and not think you were a jackass. I managed to not buy into that – instead, I was all about the Scotch Whisky Experience, a guided tour through the process of distilling the liquor (this part was gimmicky; it was like a Disneyworld ride in a wooden liquor barrel), a sample of whisky, and a tour through the biggest whisky collection in the world, belonging to Claive Vidiz and brought to Scotland from Brazil. One bottle cost £1000 when it was purchased in the ’60s; none of the bottles were opened, let alone sampled, although plenty had evaporated over the years.
So, unless you’re the guy who invented Google, you probably can’t afford to get the world’s biggest whisky collection, so you should stop now and just enjoy it. If you happen to like scotch, which it turns out I don’t. But I’m not trying to collect bottles either.
After the tour, it was about time for supper. We found a pub near our hostel and took the chance: ordered up some haggis. It came out in a circular chunk, with potatoes, turnip, and a creamy sauce all stacked together. I wasn’t turned off by the fact that haggis is gross (probably because it’s not, at least not relatively – check the ingredients on your gummy worms next time), but the sauce made the whole thing a bit too rich for me, and the meat had too strong a taste.
But I ate haggis in Edinburgh; ate all of it. This is bucket list material (right up there with eating escargot in France, which I did in St. Pierre in 2005).
After supper, a few of us went to a Middle Eastern shisha bar down the street from our restaurant. Doncha worry, Mom, hookahs are totally legal and not gonna kill me, it's just a relaxing way to spend an hour on a balcony overlooking a city more than a thousand years old. Plus, it tasted like bananas and melons.
Back to the hostel then, to get a cup of tea and relax. We ended up chatting to a few people from Toronto, and decided to have a chill evening at a pub. Naive fools we were.
It was at this point that the Australian guy from the front desk burst into the common room, announcing that the hot water was back. And there was much rejoicing. Oh, and to celebrate he was giving everyone free booze.
There was more rejoicing.
We ended up back in the kitchen, a huge mob of travellers, huddled around a stewing pot that made up a concoction of blended alcohol that tasted like sweet green apples. Any pretensions of a pub night were literally scooped away by a steel ladle; instead, the hostel crowd knew about a backpacker’s bar, down the other end of High Street.
And there was much more rejoicing.
I had thought about taking a hike in the morning; apparently there was a decent, full day one, just a short bus trip out of Edinburgh. I guess I’ll never know.
Actually, the morning wasn’t that bad, even though 3 a.m. almost ended with my head over the toilet (almost); it started early, with plenty of bacon and tea at an outdoor café. After that, we hoofed it out on own, finding an ancient graveyard that led the way up Calton Hill, a melting pot of architecture that ranged from a half-finished Parthenon-like construction (the National Monument, known as Edinburgh’s Disgrace) to the towering Nelson Monument. It also offered a cool view of the city, from the castle right to Arthur’s Seat.
Countdown was on though, no time to stop for long. We passed a few more statues and monuments on our way back through the city, as well as a really cool, cheap music store. Myself and Tash separated from the rest of the gang who went in for some pub food, instead grabbing a baguette and continuing along the road. We ended up at the Scott Monument (for Sir Walter), this giant, Gothic tower right on the cusp of Princes Street in the historic centre of Edinburgh.
But what a view. Plus, you could still hear the bagpipe strains from the street – and a repertoire that’s more than just “Amazing Grace,” like that guy on Water Street.
We planned on meeting the rest of the group back at Edinburgh Castle around 3 o’clock, so once we got back to solid ground and I’d kissed it, promising never to leave it ever again, we headed for a forested path that we thought would take us right there. Once we were right in the shadow of the castle, the way was blocked by construction, and a sign telling us to turn around; no access this way.
They're bluffing
Naturally, this sign wasn’t meant for the twenty-year-old Canadian tourist. So, we wiggled past the fencing, and I went from being positive I was going to die on the Scott Monument to being positive I was going to be arrested for trespassing. To make a long story short, I’m actually writing this from an Edinburgh lockup, where they feed me a bowl of porridge twice a day, and I call myself lucky.
Not quite, but we didn’t get to the castle that way, either. Backtracked, and went the conventional route to the entrance. The interior of Edinburgh Castle is a) much larger than I thought. Jaysus, this is basically a town in and of itself, b) a bit of a tourist trap, but c) cool, too. St. Margaret’s Chapel is the oldest surviving building in Edinburgh, going back to the 12th century, and if there hadn’t been cars driving through the portcullis gates or slews of Japanese tourists posing in front of every other brick in the wall, I’d believe I was in an episode of Games of Thrones. Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t completely buy into that, since just about everyone dies in that.
Also, the Crown Jewels were there, as well as a legitimate piece of Scottish history called the Stone of Destiny. Yup, I’m in Game of Thrones after all.
Reassembled at home base, AKA Castle Rock, where we opted to take a ghost tour through the underbelly of Edinburgh, literally heading down to the ancient vaults beneath the streets. The tour was fun, maybe a bit less about stories and more about atmosphere than the St. John’s Haunted Hike . . . or at least, I imagine it was. I wasn’t paying that much attention; turns out, once I get it in my mind that a certain place would be a terrible place to have to take a piss, my bladder becomes as fragile as that piece of Tupperware that they run over in Napoleon Dynamite, and just as easily ruptured.
A crowded room in an underground vault that may or may not be haunted is a crappy place to be bouncing around on the heels of your feet. Oh, and didn’t I know it.
That night (after I made a life or death stop at a coffee shop across from the vault exit) we found a pub that was basically a frat house, with fossball, pool, a jukebox, and student rates on pints. That was one of the coolest things about Edinburgh; how it was a town that accommodated students, rather than thinking them the scum of the earth. It’s the second most visited place in the UK, and for good reason.
Called it quits early on Saturday (by Newfoundland standards, anyway; the bar was closed when we left), with plenty of time to assemble our stuff for the 10:30 checkout on Sunday morning. After a light breakfast, I was going on a hike, come hell or high water. Tash, Lor, and Terry were up for it, so we headed down High Street to the base of Arthur’s Seat, a green lump on the edge of the city.
It was a wicked day for it; better than Saturday would have been, not to mention the fact that we were all in better shape for it. We had a great time, exploring the different pathways skirting the hill, before making the final trek to the rocky, windy tip of the hill. The best things in life very well could be free. Great view of the city, and a great parting glance – it was from here that I got a feel for how big Edinburgh was, and how we had only seen a small slice.
What did we miss out on? Crowds and modern buildings and traffic lights and burgeoning capitalism. AHHH, full circle, betcha didn’t see that coming! Seriously though, for such a short visit, we somehow managed to be concentrated in the most impressive area of the city, to have no plan and yet have everything work out as if we’d bent ourselves on making it happen.
We had next to no time, and yet there was time to meet people, to explore, to drink, to sit, and to laugh. So, do I wish I could have seen Loch Ness or the highlands, or anything outside of Edinburgh? Sure I do. I also wish I had a million dollars. I don’t though, and it doesn’t bother me one little bit.
There are still a few more stories to tell – after class yesterday, we headed back into London, and checked out the Tate Modern, got practically drowned in rain, and stopped at the National Theatre for a production of Mike Leigh’s new work “Grief,” the first play that really left an emotional stamp on me after leaving the theatre. That comes later though; as in showbiz, always leave them wanting more.
Cheers,
rb
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