I awoke this morning to a miracle! My prayers have been answered – no, I didn’t meet some hot European prince who wants me and Lola (my dog) to move to Europe and live in his castle. It’s better. Better you ask? Yes! The weather finally broke today. It’s cold, drizzly and gray. I’m told this is more like Scottish weather. The heat wave has ended, much like my time in Scotland is coming to an end.
Today I put on my best pair of jeans. OK, I’m only traveling with one pair so by definition they are indeed my best pair but wearing jeans hasn’t happened much on this trip. In fact, I might be looking into sending my 2nd pair of pants and a sweater back to America (yes, I packed for everything). Maybe Danielle will take it for me and send it cheaper than international post – I’m meeting her in about a month!
I decided I would walk to the end of The Royal Mile and found a cute little fudge shop that offered “free tastings.” So at 10:30a I bought a lemon meringue and a pecan chocolate swirl piece of fudge. Yes, I’ve been walking around so much that I’m actually losing weight so I can afford to eat fudge at 10:30a. And I’m on perpetual vacation. I’ve reached the point in my journey where after this many days on vacation, I’d have to return to work (another reason to move to Europe, they get 5 weeks of vacation compared to our 3. So not fair). Usually at this point in my shorter trips, I’m ready to go home but now I’m just ready to go…to the next destination, to the next country, to the next friend.
The first real issue I found with Scotland is that lunch is not served until noon. I don’t eat breakfast and usually have lunch around 11am. It has been a real struggle trying to wait until noon because (shockingly) even the pubs aren’t open before noon. Very strange county and Ireland has them beat on the availability of a pint of beer before noon. Don’t judge, I sit and read a book while I’m there. To kill time today, I went to Armchair Books (on the recommendation of Alex from Luxembourg). It was old, musty and had that definitive smell of a used bookstore. I loved it but sadly didn’t even browse for titles from my “book bucket list” because I can’t bear to leave another book behind (especially if I loved reading it).
Then I walked around the Grassmarket Area waiting for an italian restaurant to open up. It wasn’t very good but I eat a really heavy meal at lunch and compensate for it by eating a salad at the hostel and today I had to use up all my food since I’m leaving tomorrow. And no, I’m not telling you where I’m going next.
After lunch, the OLDEST pub in Edinburgh was finally open! Yippee for me!! The White Hart Inn has been in business since 1516 and even had a visit from the Queen herself so you know it’s legit. I had my first Scottish beer (a lager from Innis & Gunn Brewing) and my first Scottish whisky taste (Dalwhinnie 15 year old: aromatic, dry. Lightly peaty malt. Smooth flavors with heather honey notes). These are my no-filter thoughts as I’m tasting it:
Man this is strong. Probably shouldn’t have had wine at lunch. Or ordered a beer with the whisky. Luckily I’m super close to my hostel. [Reading the description for Dalwhinnie from the menu]. Man, that description sounds a lot like me. Hahahahaha.
Afterwards, I did what anyone who’s had 3 types of alcohol within the span of 2 hours does; I took a side trip to this cemetery that is near my hostel. I wasn’t really going to check it out as the cemeteries in Argentina are the best ones in the world IMHO but when in Rome, er, when in Scotland. In Scotland, apparently it’s OK to site on graves, take naps in the cemetery and wander around. It’s even more OK since J.K. Rowling walked through this cemetery to find names for Harry Potter characters – McGonagall is the name of Scotland’s worst poet and the plaque for him is pretty small and insignificant when you see how ornate and elaborate others are.
S*%t in Scotland got pretty real back in the day. Grave robbers would dig up graves and sell the bodies to doctors to learn about the human body and perform experiments. The practice of digging up graves was stopped in 1832 by The Anatomy Act. I would love to look up the wording of this act: hey jerks, this was a person once. Have some respect and stop digging them up. Or something like that. Perhaps this is why Edinburgh has a world class medical school. Either way, people would put cages and bars over graves to protect the bodies from would be robbers.
And thus ends a pretty fascinating time in Scotland. I feel like the history is going to get much more interesting as I move away from the West coasts of Europe and to even older cities.
There She Goes... 