Picking up where we left off: The Big Update

You can breathe a sigh of relief, as this entry should be more concise than the last several.

Becky and I took off Tuesday evening in the beautiful sun, headed for Arthur's Seat in Holyrood Park. The climb was amazing, offering splendid views of the city of Edinburgh and the Firth of Forth. We took pictures and video all the way up. Becky's going to post an album of these on Facebook due to space constraints - here's a few favorites though!

We had been at the peak for a half hour or so when I said to Becky, “Look at that rainbow, did you get a picture of it?”

Immediately afterwards it occurred to me that rainbows don't just magic themselves into existence. A storm was coming, and we both knew it and started getting ready to head off the hill. It started sprinkling as we left the summit itself and started back the way we had came. In my infinite stupidity, I decided that we might save time and get out of the rain (And lightning) faster by following a steeper path we had opted against during our ascent.

Yeah, that was a bad idea.

See that darker path on the left third of the screen -- that's what we climbed down. Or scooted down -- whatever.

As we picked our way down the face, it became clear we had about 80 yards of rather precipitous crab-walking to do. We had come too far to easily get back to the peak and follow the walking path, so we slowly scrabbled down the eroded pathway in the rain, which was by then steady enough to get us pretty wet. We made it to the stairway path at about the same time as a couple that was on the peak with us, demonstrating that we neither gained nor lost time, but rather took the much more difficult and equally time consuming route.

Becky was deeply saddened to find that her beloved Nokia phone was literally dripping water from its keyboard. A casualty of Arthur's Seat. Exhausted and soaked, we showered and then headed out to find food. It's strange that in a tourist city everything closes at 9pm, but it does. This is particularly strange given that continental Europeans, particularly the Spanish and Italians, regularly eat dinner that late or later. But that's how it goes. All we could find was a Chinese take-out place, but we were happy to have found it, and the food actually turned out to be quite good.

The next day Becky headed to an autism symposium at the conference while I slept in and did a bit of laundry. We met up around noon and headed out for lunch, finding the Auld Hoose pub to be a fabulous spot. The food and real ales were delicious! It was almost empty and the bartender was a lot of fun, chatting about the food and beers with us.

A poster of our favorite beer in the Auld Hoose

Becky's delicious lamb and ale pie with mash!

We headed down to the Dynamic Earth exhibit near Holyrood Palace and park, mostly looking for good souvenirs as the attraction is geared towards children. We bought a couple things then headed over towards the Palace. As we walked through the gates and made to pull out of British Heritage Passes, Becky realized her wallet was missing.

The Dynamic Earth Exhibit

Stones with explanations of each period in Scotland's formation - very cool.

The last stone! And possibly where my wallet disappeared! :(

Yes, really and truly missing. We retraced our steps and checked with the gift shop and could not locate it. They took our info and we made a police report to a cop who happened to be nearby. We lost about 50 pounds and Becky lost all of her credit and debit cards, plus her license. Understandably upset, we took most of the rest of the day off. After trying to get her British Heritage Pass (The all-in-one pass that lets us skip lines and get free admission at most of our planned historic stops) replaced, to no avail, we headed back to the dorm and took a nap.

Becky kept a stiff upper lip though, and decided much to my surprise to go ahead and go to the Ceilidh for conference participants as she had planned. She'll have to add in a bit about that on her own!

Becky's bit:

The Ceilidh was pretty lame. Worse than I'd even imagined, but at least it got me out of bed!

They said to get to Balmoral Hotel early to watch the professional dancers and learn the steps. While I had no interest in actually dancing myself I was curious about the dances and music. I arrived at 7:40 (started at 7:30) and was the first person. Odd. I walked back out and an older lady asked if I wanted to go in with her so we'd both be the first. She was funny and charming so we went up to the bar and she ordered a "wee scottish beer" with a Swedish accent and the bartender was not amused. I was, however. But then her friends showed up so she left me to speak in her home language! Alone again, I snapped a few pictures of the view and of the room, which were both stunning.

The castle is up there in the background!



Long story short, the dancing didn't actually start until after 9. I'm not sure what happened but I just watched a bit before heading home. The pictures are grainy but you'll get the idea!




Incidentally, I think this happens to be the annoying guy who sat next to me at the symposium the next day, now that I'm looking at it!

So after the first dance, I took off to come back home!

Back to Dave:

She got back late and we decided to once again get Chinese food from the place across the street from the dorm, and it was again delicious. It might sound ridiculous, but I would seriously rank that place among the best food we've had while in Edinburgh. The meat is real, not terrible cuts of dark chicken wrapped in an inch of doughy breading, as you normally get anywhere in the US from a comparable restaurant. The flavor is great and the prices are low!

Afterwards we called it a night.

This morning (Thursday) was our last full day in Edinburgh. Becky wisely chose to skip the plenary for the first (and only) time of the conference, and we slept in before heading out for some more sight-seeing. We hit up the Scotch Whisky Experience, about 100 yards from Edinburgh Castle, and were quite unimpressed. Becky compared it to Disney World, where the attractions were probably great 20 years ago when they made their debut, but today just feel clunky and dated.

The guide was great, we got 2 free drams of whisky out of it, one for having a coupon – my wife is awesome – and one because one of the videos wouldn't work during our tour and so they bribed us with free whisky. That brought it to a total of 3 shots of whisky each for the price of the tour (One is included), which meant that given the ticket price we basically got a free crappy tour for the price of 3 malts each.

So the price wasn't terrible, it was just kind of boring, particularly the incredibly slow “Whisky Barrel Ride,” where you sit in a little mock whisky barrel as it moves through very goofy still-life scenes while the barrel narrates the history of malt whisky.

King Charles and Sir Walter Scott chatting it up

The whisky bar downstairs was the best part, and I could have happily wasted an afternoon there sampling the hundreds of different bottles of malt whisky, blended whisky, and whisky liquers. The bartender we had towards the end (Apparently everyone is a tour guide and a bartender, as they were all rotating in and out) was a lot of fun, subtly mocking the place along with us and talking about the history a little bit, as well as their plans for a much-needed renovation this September.

Map with lights representing all(?) of the distilleries in Scotland

So I guess the verdict is that if you come to Edinburgh sometime after this fall, visit the Scotch Whisky Experience, since the people and whisky bar are great, there's actually a lot of clear and interesting information about the history of whisky, and the lackluster tour will have been updated by then

Every bottle is a bottle of some type of whisky!

We departed, and our next stop was a haircut for me! Those of you who know me well will know my reticence when it comes to haircuts, which mostly stems from my unwillingness to pay someone $20 to cut my hair when I can spend less time shaving it all off in the comfort of my own bathroom. But I couldn't resist the opportunity to get a haircut and beard trim in an authentic Edinburgh barbershop, and so we walked into Alfie's Barber Shop in Old Town and I plopped myself down in a chair. The barber was great, trimming the beard quickly and quite well, then moving on to the hair. Not much more to say other than that I had a good time joking with her. I like the beard and Becky likes the hair, so I guess everyone is happy! Results:

The haircut was followed by lunch nextdoor in The Halfway House, “The smallest pub in Edinburgh,” which was great! We had as good a time in here as we did in any other pub in the city, and it will be hard to top for the rest of the trip. The food was excellent and they had a great selection of real ales, mostly from the Isle of Skye. Becky and I are getting used to drinking warm (Cellar-temperature, I would say around 65 degrees F) beer. I had stovies, potatoes cooked in meat broth, then mashed with the meat in question – in this case, corned beef. It was served with oatcakes and butter, and was absolutely delicious, by far the best Scottish food I have had on the trip! Becky had a fisherman's pie and lauded it also, though I didn't try it as I am not a big fan of seafood.

Halfway house and the impossibly small alley where we found these gems!

We left and walked a bit of the Royal Mile together, then parted ways as Becky had to get to the conference to see the poster presentations before the afternoon sessions began. I headed down the rest of the Royal Mile alone, taking some pictures of stuff we couldn't get the first day since the camera died. I checked for her wallet a second time at Living Earth (The credit cards still haven't been used, so there's a chance it's lost rather than stolen, but they didn't have it). Then I took in Holyrood Palace and the Queen's Gallery.The Gallery was great, but a bit overwhelming. It is all Renaissance Italian artists currently, and I spent much more time looking at the chalk sketches than at the finished oil paintings, being more interested in drawing than painting. They had a da Vinci drawing, among dozens of others, and I had a good time in there.

I left and headed for Holyrood Palace itself, trying to make my way through quickly. If you have never had the experience of being a tourist alone, I recommend you try it. Once. It's somewhat disconcerting, or at least was for me. The palace was beautiful, full of too many works of art and bits of Scottish history to name. I enjoyed the ruined Abbey and Gardens at least as much as the Palace itself. Afterwards I walked back to the dorms through Holyrood Park, along the bottom of the Salisbury Crags.