Edinburgh, Day 1

My first full day in Edinburgh got started with a walking tour, my favorite way to get started in a new city. I got the meeting spot from the hostel, and headed down to the Royal Mile Starbucks to meet the tour guides (Sandeman's tours, definitely recommend them). I grabbed some tea, shortbread, and Irn Bru (a soft drink that looks like Fanta and tastes like bubble gum) while I waited, then joined the crowd when it started reaching critical mass.

Sabella, giving us a brief introduction to Scottish history.

We split up between two tour guides, and I was with Sabella, a Galician/Madrelleno expat with a

He's probably rolling in his grave.

wonderful accent halfway between Castillian Spanish and Scottish. She walked us down the Mile and ran us through some of the monuments there. My personal favorite was the statue of David Hume, a noted Scottish rationalist philosopher who led a campaign to get people to at least question superstitions, traditions, and religion. He was quite successful (as Edinburgh's many empty and repurposed churches will attest to), but for some reason it's tradition to rub his toe for good luck.Which means that Scotland's most famous rationalist is now also Scotlands biggest good luck charm, and he has the shiny toe to prove it.

Shortly after Mr. Hume and his well-polished meta-tarsals, we ducked down a close (small, medieval-style alleys leading from streets to plazas), and got a brief glimpse of what Edinburgh used to look like. Strangely Edinburgh looks quite old, but most of the buildings in its Old Town are only from the 19th century. We also learned a bit about how the castle predates the city by hundreds of years, and a bit where the name came from. Even before the Gaelic Scots moved in, the Picts (the tribes that supplied the nude, woad-painted warriors that scared the Romans into building a wall and just giving up on taking the highlands) lived in fortifications on top of Castle Rock. They called it "Dunedin" which means "Castle Edin." When the Germanic Bretons moved in and expanded the city outside of the castle walls, they called it "Edinburgh," meaning "the Village of Edin." As the city grew, the name stuck.

We also got a wonderful lesson in how Sir Walter Scott basically invented the whole romantic mythos of the highlands from whole cloth. Basically, until he started writing his novels in the late 18th century, 'the highlands' was akin to 'redneck country.' People in England and lowland Scotland looked at highlanders as sort of uncivilized back-country hicks until Scott wove an idealized version of both the area and its people. And it worked! His writings rekindled a sort of Scottish national pride, and drove a lot of people to want to visit the country.

My favorite bit of this is that he basically invented the kilt as we know it. Yes, ancient Scots wore tartans, but they wore them as pieces of whole-body wrap, like this (undershirt optional). The modern idea of the plaid manskirt with argyle knee socks is only about 200 years old.

After the Royal Mile, we wended our way down to Grassmarket, where Sabella explained the area's history as a hay market and the site of the gallows. While she was talking, we were all shivering and trying to stay warm, to little avail. When the tour got interrupted by a hail storm, however, Sabella called uncle, and we had the mid-tour coffee break a little early. I got a scone and some tea, and met a girl from Chicago who was studying for a year in Copenhagen. She was nice and super friendly, but wasn't particularly...nuanced in her opinions. Whether it was politics ("I don't get why the US just can't be like Europe; it's so perfect over here!"), attitudes towards regions of the states ("I could never live in the south; everyone there is racist and antifeminist"), to her own stereotypes ("Texans are all just rednecks with guns and ten-gallon hats") her opinions were certainly entertaining to hear.

After our coffee break (and more importantly after the snow and hail had stopped), we wandered over to the Greyfrier's Church to check out the graveyard and surrounding area. J.K. Rowling lived in an apartment overlooking the graveyard while she was writing Harry Potter, and you can definitely tell the area had an effect on her writing. She lived directly across the graveyard from a boarding school that had four houses (two of which were named Greyfrier and Raven), split into four different towers. The tour guide said the image of Hogwarts in the movies largely came from taking Edinburgh castle, dropping it in the middle of the school (George Heriots Academy), and putting the whole thing on a lake. Some of the names in the graveyard definitely ring a bell as well. I passed a McGonagall, a Moodie, and a Pettigrew, and got directions to the second most famous tombstone in the graveyard.

Directions: "Follow the path around the corner, until you find a spot where the grass has been killed off by a dark and terrible force: tourists."

Bobby's tombstone.

Wizarding aside complete, we learned a bit more about the history of grave robbing in the city (entertaining, gruesome, and educational, what more could you ask?), then learned about the most famous tombstone in the yard, the one belonging to Greyfrier's Bobby. Bobby was a terrier who's owner passed away, and who followed the funeral procession to the graveyard. When the funeral was over though, he stayed behind and lived the rest of his life in the churchyard. The whole city loved the dog and treated him like a mascot, particularly since he brought in people from all over the British Isles who wanted to meet him. There's a theory that when the original Bobby died, he was replaced with another terrier to keep the tourists coming. I don't know if it's true, but I'll just hope for the best instead. Tradition is that if you go to see his tombstone, you bring him a stick to play with, and the ground in front of his stone is covered in everything from twigs to whole tree branches.

The tour ended in the shadow of the National Museum across the street, and I got a recommendation from Sabella to go get a pulled pork and haggis sandwich from Oink in Grassmarket. I followed her advice and wasn't disappointed. I munched on it while wandering the Saturday farmer's market in the square, and got a few Scottish flavored macarons (Irn Bru and poprocks, Hendrick's gin, elderflower, and earl gray) from a woman who was super happy to talk to me about the city. Most of the advice she gave was about the haunted and medical histories of the city, which I'm generally not interested in, but it was still fun to talk to a friendly face. I finished my sandwich on a bench near where the gallows had been, then waffled a bit about what to do for the rest of the day. I ALMOST went and saw the National Museum (like, was standing in line to get a ticket) before I decided to do Sandeman's castle tour instead. I bolted back to the cafe where they were selling tickets and grabbed one right as they were packing up, then walked to the meeting spot to start the second tour of the day.

Bobby's statue outside the graveyard. Scots like to rub brass statues for some reason.

I met up with Jen, my tour guide for the castle, who ran us through the history of the many times the castle had changed hands throughout the years, and exactly why Mel Gibson's Braveheart was full of crap (short version, he wasn't a highlander, he was a rich lowlander noble, he was politically motivated, not personally, and he wasn't The Braveheart; Robert the Bruce, another figure of Scottish history, was). We walked up the castle through rain, sleet, snow, and sun and got a lovely view of the city from the top. I skipped the military exhibits and went to see the crown jewels instead. The exhibit was a bit Disneyesque, but was fun and educational nonetheless.

Top of the castle, post hail.

After that, I wandered down to a nice looking restaurant on the Mile I'd passed the day before. I grabbed a seat and when the waitress brought the menu, she hit on my greatest weakness: chef's tasting menus. I resigned myself to the fact that this meal was going to be a pricey one and just enjoyed it. It ran through all the foods Scotland is famous for, from scallops, to cheese, to venison, to rhubarb. Definitely worth the extra scratch.

Thoroughly stuffed, I waddled home to bed on legs that were definitely starting to feel the back-to-back walking tours.