Jess and I dropped mum off at the airport and returned the rental car and argued for our discounts - beware Irish car rental companies, their bills don't add up and they'll sting you at any chance! all the travel review websites on the subject are right.
Anyhow, we spent most of the day in the airport waiting for our flight, which was delayed, but we made it to Edinburgh and caught the nice quick airlink bus into the city (the strange guy chatting to us notwithstanding)!
First impressions of Edinburgh; thank goodness I don't have to drive through it in a rental car(!); Jess says it's like a smaller, more relaxed version of London; with grey, soot covered buildings; little hills that the city traverses up, down and around everywhere; and so many little alleyways off main streets, with interesting little nook and crannies - I am really enjoying exploring and it will be a great place for Simon and I to have a few days to unwind.
After we'd checked in, been ribbed by the Aussies behind the desk of the hostel and wandered around the city for a little bit (nice view of the city from the nearby Dublin castle!), we had an early dinner and spent the rest of the night talking to the lovely Kerryn, an American with an English accent after living in London for four years.
To paraphrase the story, his master was the warden of Greyfriar's graveyard, a church who had to employ security to stop grave-robbers entering, and once the warden died, he was buried in Greyfriar's as an exemption to their usually strict 'entrance' requirements to recognise his contribution. Little Bobby never left his master's grave, and when kicked out of Greyfriar's every night by the new warden, he would always find a way back in - no matter how many holes they filled, fences they built, or extended; little Bobby would be patiently resting next to his master's graveside for the rest of his long life. When the little dog finally passed away, the city chose to commemorate him by erecting a statue in his likeness near Greyfriars, so that he could always be by his master's side. So the story goes anyhow!
Edinburgh has a lot of pubs - all selling pretty great food, locally brewed and stored ales (beer from a cask - Simon tells me its banned in Australia - tastes different!), whisky (of course - they are the kings of whisky over here!) and it seems like every pub has a story that goes with its naming. For instance, there is Maggie Dickinsons' - the lady who evaded death by hanging (for adultery and having a child out of wedlock) by being so overweight that the noose only knocked her out rather than snapping her neck, with the sight of her sitting up in the undertaker's cart enough to strike fear into all of the superstitious Scots who saw her; she spent the rest of her days working at the pub that now bears her name, consoling all those about to be executed as they drank their final whisky. So many stories!
(Public warning: Nasty details and gory stories replicated below! For those with a sensitive stomach, don't read immediately after eating...)
Another that stuck out for me was Princes St Gardens, which is now an incredibly lush, green rolling valley containing fields of daffodils (that brought an involuntary 'wow' to jess' lips, see above for amazing-ness!), gorgeous old trees and picturesque little flower arrangements. It was previously Nor Loch (a lake) where the waste of Edinburgh drained to, and its the sort of waste that they collected in the bathroom during the day and threw out of the window once the bell struck at 10pm. For a city which was, for its time, reasonably densely populated, the stench from this draining waste was enough to give Edinburgh the nickname old stinker (or something similar once translated!). The city drained the lake in the 1820's (such history!) and it was when it was removing one mighty stinking layer of sludge (ew!), that they found the bodies of over 300 people. The bodies were those who had perished after being accused of witchcraft; with the test of whether you were a witch or not being to tie your hands to your feet and throw you off Edinburgh castle into the stinking Loch below. Once you bounced off the rocks a few times on your way down, if you managed to somehow stay alive, you were deemed a witch (as 'obviously' the devil's hand was at play if you were managing to stay alive), and if you drowned, your name was cleared. Horrific! Even more nasty was the torture techniques used against those who did manage to float - one wife's limbs were stretched to the state of irreperable damage and agony and she was hung in this state over her husband who was being slowly killed by the addition of a weight, every half and hour onto his body until his ribs gave in and were crushed. Truly barbaric - the extent of truth to the stories who knows, but I heard similar from our bus tour guide, so it seems to be the consensus.
We also went up to Calton Hill, with nice views of the city and the 'National Disgrace' monument.
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| Monument of National Disgrace (they run out of money to finish it!) |
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| Nice view, with a lonely park bench! |
We met Sibel, a PEGS friend who came up from York for the Haggis tour, for dinner and worked out where we had to go in the morning to depart on our Haggis tour!
Our Haggis tour wasn't too big, around 30 people or so in a midibus, with two guides. Leo was our skilled bus driver, strict on talking when we should have been listening to his reverential tales, incredibly knowledgeable and great at making up the details as he chose! His cras humour was an amusing mix with his harry potter-esque glasses!
I'm bad at remembering details of our trip and I didn't take too many photos on the way, but our first day was up through Stirling and listening to stories of Scottish history, to Glencoe, a snack at a 'pit stop' famous for its 'heelan coo' (scottish for highland cow - they are just gorgeous - they have Cousin IT hair over their eyes, google them!), Hamish; Fort William for a whisky distillery tour (with a deadpan humour distill-er who was telling people off left right and centre!), through incredible scenery of the Great Glen and pulling up next to Loch Ness for a night in Fort Augustus.
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| Stunning! |
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| One of the old castles on the way |
We went on a 'Nessy' boat cruise on Loch Ness (pretty chilly!), it is a beautiful lake and is huuuuuge, the depths are just incredible, hundreds of metres in places - you may as well be in the ocean! The eccentric cap-i-tan showed us his IP protected 'sonar system' for seeking out the huge creatures, and let us have a glimpse of his mobile phone pictures, 'evidence', of the huge creatures, which showed up on his sonar at up to 13 tonne or something absolutely incredible. He even mentioned the 'evidence' he had MIT examining 'at the moment' - it is always hard to know just how much to believe with the 'scientific proof' you are shown (oooh, quotation marks sound so cynical!) - who knows, he might actually be right. In such an incredibly large lake, I could believe that there could have evolved a number of incredibly large and almost whale-like creatures - the mystery of Nessy lives on!
We went back to the hostel for a huge dinner and some trivia and drinks in the bar. We'd met some pretty cool people thus far on the tour, there were quite a few internationals working in London - Alesha a Sydney girl, Angela and Joseph who were Canadian flatmates and Andrew and Kelly, the New Zealanders.
On the second day we headed out to the Isle of Skye for some more spectacular scenery, an amazing hike up a mountain to see the old Man of Storr,
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| A-ma-zing..... |
a walk around a cute little beach town,
dunking our heads in a cold stream to commemorate an old Faerie story and back to Fort Augustus for a 'Scottish highland' show by a descendent of the MacDonald clan, who showed us (with poor volunteers!) how to fold up and dress in a kilt and many stories of what life was like back then.
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| the little lambs were so cute! |
The third day we tried a Scottish hakka to entice Nessie from the Loch and headed back along the way to Edinburgh, stopping to look at Culloden Moor, one of the most brutal battle sights between the Scottish and the English. It was a great tour, with a good bunch of friendly people and the Scottish scenery was just spectacular!
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| A castle that was quite protected by its historical society who really wanted everyone to pay 11 pounds entry and built big fences to stop any photos! |
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| The sign next to a rock on a string - Scottish humour! |
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