Edinburgh - Haunted, Drunk, and Well Read. Let's Call it a Night

I've spent 6 days in a great literary city, the capital of Scotland and home of the Scottish renaissance - Edinburgh (pronounced Ed-in-burr-uh, as opposed to Edinburg) So, the title's much more witty if you know that...see...see. I've had a chance to reconnect with my heritage a little bit. The sense of national pride here is infectious.

I've come to the quick realization that the saying: 'Scotland's better than England' holds water. Okay, well that's not a good saying, or even a saying at all, but it's still true. The Scotts are fine hosts, and what they lack in comprehensibility, they make up for in general hospitality, self depridation, and fine cuisine.

Okay, so you may be thinking: Fine cuisine? WTF! Yes, you caught me in that little white lie. Most of it is pretty good until you find out what it is. Take for instance Black Pudding, a yummy salty treat at breakfast time. It comes out as a darkly coloured hashbrown, a big purple tater tot...oh man, yum. That is until you find out that it's oats soaked in pig's blood and then deep fried. I was like 'why the hell'd you have to tell me that? I was enjoying this, now I can't put it in my mouth.' I also tried Haggis, which is actually quite good despite the fact that it is cooked in a sheep's bladder. Actually, it's really just shepherd's pie taken way too literally. It may be true that Scottish cuisine was all based on a dare. Their greatest invention though (aside from scotch whisky) may be the deep fried mars bar. So tasty. I had one before in Vancouver, and didn't feel the need to have another one. I still have the last one stuck in my femoral artery. If you do ever come here, the fudge is amazing, but crazy expensive. I only bought one piece so that I'd still have one arm to eat it with.

So far Edinburgh tops even Salzburg, any city that dedicates itself as thoroughly to writers as this town, is okay in my books. I went on a literary pubcrawl for god's sake...that's freaking awesome. Drinking and listening to great scottish prose and poety, along with their tales of drinking and fighting and whoring and storytelling. That's what literature is made of. The literary museum was overwhelming. I could feel myself well up with excitment as I walked through. I was especially excited about the Robert Lewis Stevenson exhibit. I get him. He Wrote:

to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive,

and

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake.

The guy also travelled all the way to America to track down the woman he loved. In his day it wasn't impossible to do, but in no way can you compare it to today with our fancy 'interweb' and flying boats. I have to admire that. I know I'm a crazy son of a bitch.

I decided I would not have seen Scotland if I didn't make it up to the highlands. So I took a tour. Haggis Tours was really quite good. We went to see the castle used in 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' and I had a chance to act the fool there. We then drove to the William Wallace monument, which included a 19th century tower and a decade old stone carving of Mr. Wallace, which sadly, looked remarkably like Mel Gibson. <groan> Oh well, the true story is a bit more gruesome, and we learned all about the inaccuracies in the film. The most heinous of which was that Wallace would never have been able to have yelled 'FREEEEEEEDOOMMMMMM!' because as a final indignity, the English torturer had cut of is notty bits and shoved them into his mouth. So it may have sounded more like 'Frmmmmhmmmm!' if he said anything at all.

The next day my buddy Ian, who I met in Salzburg showed up, so we went for beers and shot the shit for a while. Until the others showed up the next day. We didn´t all get to hang out until the next day. We went for dinner and I ate the Haggis and the fudge. I was meant to leave that night, and gathered my stuff to march down to the bus station. The bus seemed to be running very late, so I dug out the ticket which I bought that morning to check what time it was supposed to be there. The time was right, but the guy (who did give me an unofficial teacher discount, to his credit) wrote in the wrong date. So I had to say another night in Edinburgh with my friends. Poor Cory! So I frantically hussled back to see if I could catch them, and saw them not two blocks from the bus station. So they told me where to meet them and after I checked back into the hostel. I met them at what turned out to be a gay club. If they had any doubts in their mind about my sexuality, I proved conclusively straight the moment they saw me dance. Even my best move the step, step, clap and step was no match for the competition.

The next day Ian and I decided to get out of town and went to North Berwick, a beach town nearby. British beaches are pretty damn dirty, then we got mauled by little tiny flies that were just all over. we ha fun despite the coming of pestilence on the Isles. There was this developmentally disabled guy on the train. Really cute. He muttered and hissed to himself, much like golem all through the train ride, except when the train came to the station, when he looked up and very musically declared "the peoplessssss getssss offf at the .... sssstassssssssssstion, yes." then clapped and went back to muttering

That night I really did leave, on the hot as hell bus to London. I actually melted and they had to reform me when my vapours cooled.

With my one day in London, after being jabbed with hep A and B for a ridiculous sum of money, I decided to make the most of the free museums. I hit the Natural History, the Tate Modern, the Imperial War Museum, The Brahma Tea Museum (which was actually 4 pounds and questionably worthwile even for a tea lover), and then went and watched The Producers before catching my night train to France.

From there it´s just been a random voyage:

Paris - Lille (Lille kinda sucked so I had lunch and got back on the train to Paris to catch the Bordeaux train)

Paris-Bordeaux (Got to the train station in Bordeaux and went, um no, so I kept going)

Biarritz (a cool, but hyper touristy town with only one night accomodation, so I stayed the night and then moved on)

Then I reached San Sebastian, Spain - Ver´ nice - stayed a night. I couldn´t get a room in a hostel so got one across the street at a cheap pension. The room was nice and clean, but the very dark and creepy stairwell leading up to it was sketchy and smelled just rank. Imagine, if you can, the smell of fresh cat piss (Mike and Bridget, I know you have this one covered); now imagine that you are a super villain and you were armed with a super strength version of cat piss that could disarm the entire NYPD in one fell swoop. That´s the smell. Nasty. I´m sure some cat lady died and everyone´s just scared to find out what her apartment smells like.

The beach was perhaps the most crowded one I´ve ever seen, though I didn´t bring my camera down to evidence this claim. Something about cameras not liking to swim or some such thing. But nevertheless it was. So I spent most of my time in the waves where it was much less crowded. I challenged the sea to a duel of strength, you know a David and Goliath thing. It looked like it was begining to tire after a while, and so I got out to move my stuff futher away from the water, just as it tried something sneaky, like taking my shoes hostage. So I headed back in to give it what for. Just as I got in waist deep, it just pummelled me into the sand. I got back up, but it was clear I´d lost that adventure. Surprising, I know.

I was going to stay a few days on the beach then go to Madrid, then met some people who were going to drive to madrid, so I grabbed my stuff and left the cat-piss castle and I bummed a ride (which is where I´m at now), lovely, but scorching Madrid.


Cheers,
Cor.

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