Edinburgh, day 2

Day 2 in Edinburgh got started with a proper Scottish breakfast. Eggs, too much bacon, toast, butter, baked beans haggis sausage, and pork sausage, all washed down with a pot of tea.

To be honest at this point I felt like I needed a nap, and it was only 10 am.

I powered through though and walked down to the National Museum. It was a bit of an 'everything must go' sort of museum, ranging from natural science, to national history, to cultures of the world. I focused in on the Scottish stuff, and plowed through the Scottish history section, drooling over claymores, gold coins, and crazy ornate weaponry. The also had a chess set called the Lewis Chess Pieces, which is a set of pieces dating almost back to the Viking times. It's also quite famous as Ron Weasley's wizards' chess set in the Harry Potter movies. My favorite piece was the Berserker (which filled in the role of either the knight or the bishop, I couldn't tell).

Apparently he's chewing on his shield because a berserker from a famous Viking saga did when preparing for battle.

There was also a special exhibition on Celtic art and jewelry which was really cool to see. For a culture that never evolved writing, it's cool to see what little bits of information we're able to glean from their art. I got a few ideas for jewelry projects as well, and would have bought a book on it if it hadn't been $40 at the gift shop. After the exhibition I went up to the roof, realized that being five stories off the ground on a rainy, windy day was a bad idea, and immediately headed back down.

After a brief jaunt through the Greyfrier's graveyard to photograph Mr. Riddle's grave (I hadn't had

time the day before), I grabbed a quick lunch at The Last Drop, a pub across the street from where the Edinburgh gallows used to be. It was actually very good, despite the somewhat kitschy name. Now thoroughly full of haggis and heather ale, I wandered up to check out St. Gile's cathedral. The cathedral was nice, though honestly gothic and baroque cathedrals all basically look the same. I did like their method of charging entry though: entering the church was free, but if you wanted to take photos you had to buy a 2 pound photo pass, which I thought was a good system. You don't have to pay to have a moment of silence in a church, but the church still gets donations from tourists to keep the lights on.

St. Giles is on the Royal Mile, so I wandered the rest of the way down to Hollyrood Palace, an abbey that became the queen's palace in Edinburgh. It's at the base of Arthur's Seat, which is somewhere on the spectrum between 'large hill' and 'small mountain.' Either way, I didn't climb it :P I also didn't end up going into the palace. The royal family never interested me that much, so I decided I'd rather spend the time elsewhere.

Hollyrood Palace, through the gate.

Instead, I hiked over to New Town so that I could hike up Carlton Hill, which has a few monuments and sights, and a lovely view of the city. See how I used the word 'hike' twice in that sentence? That was on purpose. I got lost on the way thanks to Edinburgh's decidedly three-dimensional city layout (at one point standing directly under where I wanted to be), but I eventually got it figured out. I made it up to the top of the hill and saw a couple of Edinburgh's more ill-fitted attempts at culture.

They call it 'Edinburgh's Folly'

With David Hume and his contemporaries causing a stir in the world of philosophy, Edinburgh decided to re-dub itself 'The Athens of the North.' Kind of silly, but whatever, right? Wrong. As part of this, they decided to build a Parthenon on top of Carlton Hill...and ran out of money. After building the first row of columns. That row is still there though, so you can go laugh at 19th century optimism to your heart's content.

The other ill-fated monument is a joint endeavor between the Admiral Nelson monument on Carlton Hill and the One O'Clock Gun on top of Edinburgh Castle. Nelson is one of Britain's great war heroes, to the point where his monument in London is nothing less than the entirety of Trafalgar Square. Edinburgh, not to be outdone by those bloody English, decided to make their OWN Nelson monument, and this one would honor his memory by helping sailors docking in the harbor. At exactly one o'clock everyday, a ball would drop from the top of the monument to the bottom, which sailors could watch and use to set their ships' navigational clocks. I have to give it to them, their idea was pretty great, but it failed to account for the fact that Edinburgh is so cloaked in fog 2/3 of the year that you can't see the monument from the water. "That's okay!" they said. "We'll just wire the ball to a cannon at the castle, so that even if you can't see the monument, you can hear it!" Another almost great idea, this one failing to take into account that thanks to the speed of sound, the sound of the cannon doesn't reach ships in the harbor for between 3 and 10 seconds after firing, depending on where you're docked. So not that great for setting a ship's clock.

The view was nice, even if there was a group of feral hippies and/or ren fair folk loitering about

I wandered back and put my aching legs up for a while before going to check out one of Edinburgh's more controversial tourist attractions: the Scotch Whisky Experience. I say controversial, because everyone agrees that it's touristy and kitschy as HELL, but some people love it and others hate it. Both of my tour guides from the previous day said it's a fun visit, but Rick Steve just couldn't say enough bad things about it. He called it 'Malt Disney' and said it 'was only good for distilling 10 pounds from gullible tourists pockets,' going on to imply that people only liked it because of the glass of whiskey they gave you at the end. I admit I stacked the deck a bit in their favor by going for a better-than-standard tour, but I actually enjoyed it. The 'Experience' starts with a Disney-esque barrel ride through the process of making whisky, and after that the standard tour routes through the world's largest whisky collection before dropping you at a bar for your dram of whisky. My tour had an extra add on, where we had a guide (Ian) walk us through a tasting of Scotland's four big whisky regions, then explained the history and interesting tidbits of the collection to our group. All in all it came out to about $20 more, but it was totally worth it.

Four whiskies (half pours, don't worry). One each from the lowlands, highlands, Speyside, and Islay 

Back at the hostel, I started working on a blog post at the hostel, but the group next to me got down a copy of Cards Against Humanity and invited me to join. Didn't catch any of their names, but they were nice folks. Two were swedish, two were Italian, three were English, and all were moving on the next morning. Something I've noticed about Edinburgh: people don't stick around for long. The average stay of my roommates has been just a scoche over one night. I'm by far the person who's been at the hostel for the longest at this point. Wonder why... Anyway, when the game wrapped up, they went out bar-hopping. They invited me along, but I had a tour leaving at 8 the next morning so like the crotchety old man I am, I went to bed instead.