Edinburgh, Day One

On Saturday I sat at the kitchen table thinking of the things that I wanted to accomplish before I left the UK. Among those thoughts was Tower Bridge, A three storey photography store (bigger than Toronto’s three storey mega photo store), The British Museum and a few others. However, none of these adventures really seemed as epic as the three days I had left would permit. Then like a ton of bricks, It hit me. What I really had wanted to do was go to either Ireland or Scotland. Well, as Ireland would require flights that had long since become very expensive (or a bus and a ferry), that left me with Scotland. With only two options of cities that I wanted to go and see, I had to choose between Glasgow and Edinburgh. That decision was made easily due to the availability of transport and the fact that I have some friends in Edinburgh.
I ran down to the station soon thereafter to purchase my tickets for an overnight bus that left at 11pm. Luckily there was still room on the bus, and I bought my return tickets. Afterwards I went to a fantastic dinner with my London hosts which we walked to through Trafalgar square where a Pride celebration was well underway. The dinner was superb; I enjoyed the slowly roasted duck and washed it down with a Juliper beer. On the way home we went through the Pride nerve centre in Soho which was a lot like church and Wesley at the Toronto Pride festival; lots of bright colors, people having a great time, and plenty of drag queens.

Largest Scotch Collection in the World

Once home I quickly packed and headed back to the coach station, ticket in hand. After a short wait the gate opened and the queue shuffled onto the bus, all of us hoping to have a decent seat for the nine hour ride ahead of us. After attempting to coax myself to sleep with Tom Waits (Closing Time and The Early Years). Later I realized that if Tom couldn’t help me get to sleep, then I might as well quit trying and watch a film.
Some hours later we stopped at a service station and then another few hours later we had yet another stop. There had been a bit of weather on our way to the second stop (low laying clouds in the valleys) so there was an excellent rainbow to greet us as we disembarked from our bus at the second rest stop.
Finally, after what seemed like a never ending bus ride, we finally arrived in Edinburgh at 8am. I stopped after a short walk away from the station to get a spot of breakfast and to find some locals that might be able to point me to the city’s high street where hostel that I was planning to stay at was located.

Warning!

After breakfast I followed the direction that the friendly person that sat beside me had said and ended up in downtown Edinburgh. However although I was downtown I had no clue where the high street was. None of the streets that I passed was called high street, and none of the streets I passed looked like a high street with high end shops and whatnot. A stopped a man who was cleaning up trash and he pointed me in the right direction which was back the way I came. The high street is also named “the Royal Mile” so I at least I can pretend that I had an excuse.
Edinburgh, by the way, is the grossest city I have ever seen - from a garbage perspective - in the morning. I thought it was because it was just garbage day and some animals had gotten into it, however there was also garbage strewn about the next day in the morning. By the afternoon though the garbage was cleaned up nicely.
I first walked up the Royal Mile towards the Edinburgh Castle, but it was closed until much later so instead I went looking for the hostel. Somehow I managed to see a pretty small sign pointing the way to it and checked into the MacHostel (I’m not kidding... it was seriously called the “MacHostel”). The hostel was only 15 pounds for the night which sounded like a good idea to me, and I registered myself. Unfortunately the check in time was 2pm so I had to carry my whole kit around with me while I toured the city.
Next I went back up to the castle and even though it was raining I had my rain jacket and figured I would be fine with a few drops. What I didn’t expect however was the 15 pound price tag to enter! Yeah right. So, angry with the extreme price tag I went back down the street looking for something else to ease my woes of not seeing the castle.
The Scotch Whiskey Experience tour did the trick. The student rate was only 8.50 and it had a cool Disney type ride in a barrel, so I was happy enough. That price also included a tour guide after the barrel ride, and a scotch tasting. Then, an added bonus was thrown in; we saw the world’s largest whiskey collection. Awwwesome. I would say there were several thousand bottles there. At the end of the tour I asked the tour guide if she could tell me about some of the more interesting things that I should spend a day doing. She recommended walking down to the park at the far bottom of the Royal Mile, and said that there was a nice hill I could climb to takes some pictures of the city.

Hill Climbing

She undersold it a *bit*. This was not just a hill, but rather an epic mountain. I switched from my leisure jeans to my extreme mountaineering shorts in the visitors centre bathroom and set off to begin the climb. I powered up the around the first corner and though I was pretty high and took a picture of my GPS to show the change in elevation as well as snapping a few pictures. It was a view to remember.

Then I turned the corner and saw the real summit looming before me. Yeah, it was big enough to be called a summit. Going up the next leg looked to be a bit harder, as the trail changed from groomed to ragged and rocky and I had about twenty extra kilograms to contend with in my backpack. Never the less I resolved to get there and I set off again up the mountain.
Eventually, I made it up to the top. Only a handful of people made it up there when I arrived. The sight was beautiful. A few hundred meters up and I could see the entire city (and then some). Being that the view went as far as the eye could see, I took a few pictures.... a few hundred actually - it was that good. At the top I also met another photographer shooting some medium format film and a digital as well and we chatted for quite a while before we both headed back down the mountain.

The Summit

Remember all of the complaining I did about the steep and dangerous climb? Well, it turns out that while one side of the mountain was rocky and steep, the other was a gentle, grassy slope back into the park area with a beautiful set of ponds at the bottom and Swans swimming around to complete the picture. What a difference!
Anyways I sauntered back down the hill (notice how it is a hill now...) and snapped a few pictures of swans.

This guy held his kid at arms length so that the swans could take turns trying to bite her hands off. Cute.

After the mountaineering adventure it was late enough that I could check into the hostel and drop my bags off. Leaving the majority of my things in the foot locker in the room, I made my way along to an internet cafe and did a bit of work before meeting with a friend of mine from the GISLab at Queen’s University.
Mel met me with her boyfriend George, and after introductions we went off to find some Haggis at a local grocer. My goodness, Haggis in Edinburgh is good! It was much better than any dinner we could have got in a pub and the whole deal only cost 5 pounds!

Haggis and Neaps

After that great dinner I went back to the MacHostel and took some of the extra beer from dinner down to the lounge to play a little billiards and meet new people. After playing half a game a few people nearby were chatting in French, and in my best Quebec h’acent I asked if they would like to join me. Amazingly they understood and we played a great game of doubles. After chatting for a while we went over where we were from and it turned out that they were in fact Quebecers, so no wonder they could figure out the franglais I was butchering. Once the game was done we chatted for a while longer and they went out to a club. I was tempted to join them, but after having not getting any sleep the night before I figured that I would take it easy and grab a decent night’s sleep. Somehow I had remembered to bring my earplugs with me on the trip and I was glad to have them then! The hostel was loud and hot, but I still got a great sleep, and woke up fresh for the next day of adventures

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