Edinburgh
”Edinburgh is an experience
A city of enormous gifts
Whose streets sing of history
Whose cobbles tell tales.”
--Alan
Bold
I haven’t yet
travelled somewhere that I didn’t like, which is probably due in part to the
fact that I am relatively open and easy to please. Still, every once in a while
I visit a place where I feel a slightly deeper connection. It’s like
meeting someone you feel like you’ve known for years and knowing that you are
going to be close friends. Edinburgh was like that for me from the minute Maggie
and I landed.
Side Note: For
those who don’t know much about Maggie, she is an art education major from
Pennsylvania who was studying at Westminster the same semester that I was. We
met in a class called Modern Art in London, where we quickly clicked, and a
couple of weeks later we found ourselves traveling together in Amsterdam. She’s
definitely one of my favorite people, but she’s especially one of my all time
favorite people to travel with. When I travel, I like to research my
destination first and make two lists: the
I-will-die-if-I-don’t-see-these-things list and then the
if-there’s-time-I’d-like-to-see-these-things list. Maggie doesn’t particularly
like to plan, and prefers to go list-less and go with the flow instead, which
pretty much makes us travel-partners made in heaven.
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| Maggie in front of our hostel |
We arrived on a
Friday morning in early December and easily found the High Street Hostel just
off the Royal Mile. The building is tall and ancient looking, which is probably
due to the fact that, by American standards, it is ancient. James Douglas, the
4th Earl of Morton, Lord Chancellor of Scotland and adulterous lover of Mary,
Queen of Scots, had originally constructed the building in 1564, before he was
condemned to death for allegedly helping to murder the Queen’s husband.
The common room
just next to the reception desk was full of old, squishy leather armchairs,
bookcases and other odds and ends. The walls are exposed brick and there are
fliers and notices hung all over advertising pub-crawls, free tours and various
other events. After getting our keys, we returned to the main street and headed
up towards the castle.
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| Our hostel is point A, point B is the castle half a mile away. Point C is the Elephant House, and the Holyrood Palace can be seen on the right hand of the map at the other end of the Royal Mile. |
The Royal Mile
is the high street in the old city, and runs from Edinburgh Castle at one end
to Palace of Holyrood House, the official Scottish residence of the United
Kingdom’s Monarch, at the other. True to its name, the Royal Mile is one
Scottish Mile long, or 1.12 miles by our standards.
It was a chilly
day, but the old town in Edinburgh is so beautiful that we took our time as we
made our way toward the castle. Almost everything on the street was built from
grayish-brown stone, and while the old town area that we were in was ancient and
full of secrets, it seemed as alive as the crowds milling about on top of it.
St. Giles Cathedral
We soon came upon
St. Giles Cathedral, also called the High Kirk of Edinburgh, which is the main home
for the Church of Scotland in the city. The cathedral has an ornate, crowned
dome, but was smaller than other cathedrals in Europe. Inside though, past the
pews and glittering stained glass, tucked away at the back is a small room
called the Thistle Chapel, which rivals the best cathedral rooms in any of the
other European cathedrals. 
The room was
built for the members of The Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle,
which is a fellowship of Scottish knights. The most immediately striking aspect
of the room is the ceiling, which is arched and has large knots of thistles,
the national flower of Scotland and of the order, carved in a manner that makes
them appear to be growing out of the stone. The stained glass windows are much
higher than in most chapels because the dark, carved wooden chairs that ring
the room, or “knights’ stalls,” rise high along the walls. There are many
beautifully carved and painted items around the room, and a majority of them
are distinctly, proudly Scottish. For instance, several of the carvings depict
angels playing bagpipes. 
Side Note: The
thistle, which is the emblem of Scotland, is actually a prickly weed, and many
Scottish people will tell you jokingly but with a hint of pride that theirs is
the only nation to adopt such a weed as a national flower. Its implications
about character are what inspires pride though, and indeed makes the flower, I
would argue, the perfect symbol for the Scottish. The flower symbolizes the
Scottish people’s peaceable nature but willingness to answer those who wound
them or provoke them in kind. The image of the thistle is often accompanied by
the motto “nemo me impune lacessit,” which translates to: “no one can harm me
unpunished.” From what I know about the Scottish culture, being partially
descended from it myself, both fit perfectly. 
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| There were individually carved crests for each knight on their stalls. |
Edinburgh Castle
“Who indeed that has
once seen Edinburgh, but must see it again in dreams waking or sleeping?”
--Charlotte Bronte
Maggie and I
continued on our way toward the castle, occasionally pausing to snap a photo or
mentally mark a place where we wanted to return later. Eventually the cobble
road widened into a paved parking lot on top of Castle Rock and the castle
loomed immediately ahead with Edinburgh spreading far below on every side but behind.
The royal castle
was first built on the site in 1100’s, and has been a key stronghold in many
famous conflicts, including the War of Scottish Independence in the 1300’s and
the Jacobite Rising in 1745. St. Margaret’s Chapel is the oldest standing building
in the entire city, and was built with the original castle in the 1100’s. One
of the other older buildings, whose name Maggie and I loved (possibly for Harry
Potter reasons), is the Great Hall.
From the first
gate, Edinburgh Castle is everything that you imagine a castle should be. Once
we passed under the portcullis gate by Argyle Tower, we turned and followed the
cobbled path to the right, emerging onto the Argyle Battery where we could look
with the cannons over Princes Street in the New Town area of Edinburgh. There
was a steep descent with a trail leading down the slope below us, and past the
city you can see the blue water of the estuary of Scotland’s River Forth. Beyond
that lay hills, low, snow-covered mountains and patchwork countryside.
We came to a
door soon with a sign for crown jewels, and, since we both like large,
expensive, shiny things, we went in and were not disappointed. Before getting
to the jewels though, there was a maze of rooms with displays and descriptions
that depicted the history of Scotland and the important players in that
history, from the early Scottish kings to Robert the Bruce to Mary Queen of
Scots and beyond. The walk led up and down staircases on a one-way maze through
the castle, and with the combination of life-sized wooden figures, storybook
like descriptions, and staged scenes, the experience felt very similar to
walking through Sleeping Beauty’s castle at Disneyland. We finally emerged in
the crown jewel room, considerably more enlightened as to Scotland’s political history
and the nations heroes, and walked around among the enormous glittering stones
and solid golden platters.
There was an
interesting story about the jewels, or the “Honours of Scotland” as they are
also called, which was illustrated earlier in the Disneyland-esque walk through
and seemed to give the shining objects more character. It went as follows:
The jewels were
hidden on three different occasions, and the longest period of time being after
the Acts of Union 1707 were signed, abolishing the Parliaments of Scotland and
England to form the Parliament of Great Britain. The jewels were placed in a
chest and buried in a nondescript dirt-floor room on the ground floor of the
castle so the English wouldn’t take them. Here they would rest until 1818, when
a group of curious Scots, including Sir Walter Scott, set out to discover them.
Once they were found, they were put on display in 1819 where they have remained
except for a brief time when they were hidden during World War II.
The Elephant House
It had been a
long day so far, (in the best sense of the phrase, but long nonetheless) and
Maggie and I had been in the UK for more than enough time at this point to know
what that meant: it was time for tea. You may laugh and think something along
the lines of “but Megan, you’re American!” Humans are amazingly adaptive
creatures though, meaning that, provided you don’t hate the taste of black tea,
if you spend enough time in the UK you’ll have the urge for a “cuppa” every
time you start to feel weary, thirsty, bored, or you glance at the clock and
realize you haven’t had one for an entire half an hour. You’ll also start to
pronounce the t’s in words like pretty and severely judge anyone who dares to
stand on the left side of an escalator instead of the right when the sign
clearly says stand on right, walk on left!
But I digress.
We started out
back down the Royal Mile in search of The
Elephant House, growing
more excited with every step. Why, you may be asking yourself? Well because The
Elephant House is the charming café where J.K. Rowling wrote the earlier books
in the Harry Potter series. (It always comes back to Harry Potter, doesn’t it?)
After taking
many, many photos of the exterior, the plaque on the wall, of ourselves
standing in front of The Elephant House - even crossing to the median in the
road to get a better shot - we finally went in and got in line, happy to be out
of the cold and so near a warm cup of tea.
The first room
in the Elephant House is little more than a wide hallway, with the pastry case
and register on one side and a single row of tables on the other and the queue
dividing the two sides.
The second room
is the more magical room. The walls are a peach color, there are carved and painted
elephants everywhere, including some of the chairs. If you look out of the row
of windows at the back of the room, there is an immediate drop before the land
rises further in the distance in cliffs on which the castle is perched. Looking
out of the windows, it’s easy to see the image of Hogwarts that J.K had in her
mind when she wrote the school into existence.
We settled in
that back room with a steaming pot of tea each and elephant shaped short bread
in front of us, looking around at each of the tables and wondering which ones
J.K. had used while writing her famous books.
The Real Mary King’s Close
"Edinburgh is a
mad god's dream."
-- Hugh MacDiarmid
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| Photos weren't allowed in The Real Mary King's Close since it is now the foundation of a government building. |
“I hate you, I
hate you, I hate you; if something jumps out at us I will kill you.”
Maggie isn’t a
huge fan of haunted places, yet we were about 7 stories underground on a dimly
lit street that had been buried for years.
No, we weren’t
lost. I may have a terrible sense of direction, but I do usually manage to stay
above ground. We were on a historical tour.
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| Arthur's Seat |
Part of what has
allowed Edinburgh to develop into the amazing historical maze that it is today
is the geography of the land it was built on. The city is built on extinct
volcanoes, which have been little more than mounds of dense, volcanic rock for
thousands of years at this point. Castle Rock at the top of The Royal Mile is
one of them, and Arthur’s Seat, located at the bottom of the hill which the
Royal Mile runs down is another. In between and all around is soft sandstone.
During the last ice age, an enormous glacier moved through the area, carving up
the sandstone around Castle Rock, but since that hill is so tough, the
sandstone behind it, where The Royal Mile now runs, was spared, creating the
interesting Crag and Tail formation we see today. The soft sandstone below
Castle Rock was perfect for carving into, allowing the millions of inhabitants
in Edinburgh over the centuries to literally carve out a city below the ground.
The Real Mary
King’s Close wasn’t originally carved underground though; in fact it used to be
on ground level over a hundred years ago, as did the streets around it that are
also buried. When new buildings were being considered on The Royal Mile, it was
simply easier to use the old streets, which sloped down away from the Royal
Mile, as foundations so that the new buildings could be level with the street
above. Thus many of the old streets were left relatively untouched as progress
continued on top of them.
One of the tours
available today takes you down onto these streets of days gone by, and lets you
walk through the original Mary King’s Close and the few closes nearby. (Side
note: Close is a term used for an alleyway or a very narrow street. Most of
them slope steeply down away from the Royal Mile, and many of the above ground
closes have long stairways today instead of slippery cobbles.)
Maggie and I had
linked arms rather firmly upon setting off down the dark, ghostly street, and
were watching the ground carefully so as not to break our necks on the ancient
cobble stones while also trying to look up at the street around us every once
in a while to take in the scenery. Soon our guide stopped in the center of the
close and pointed up at the windows.
“Edinburgh used
to be called Auld Reekie, and there are several reasons for this,” The guide, a
young man in his mid-20’s who was dressed as an 18th century laborer,
said. “It used to be one of the most overcrowded cities in the UK, and since there
was no plumbing system, people would call ‘guard-e loo!” to warn people below
to move out of the way before pouring their toilet buckets out of their
windows. The sewage would literally flow through the streets, carrying any
trash along with it to the Nor Loch below the castle, which is now Princes
Street Garden.”
Hm.
So basically,
when I trip and land on my face, I will not only break my nose but I will also
most likely ingest the fecal bacteria of hundreds of years of Edinburgh
residents.
Good to know.
The guide went
on to share another gem of disgusting information. When the townspeople wanted
to a) try someone as a witch, b) execute a criminal, or c) commit suicide, the
person to die would be thrown/jump into the Nor Loc where their lungs would
inevitably fill with years of stagnant sewage. It is estimated that nearly 300
“witches” alone were tossed in between the Middle Ages and the 18th
Century when it was drained, so there were literally hundreds of bodies rotting
in the waste.
I hope you
weren’t eating as you read that, because you’ve probably lost your appetite now
if you were.
Next we went
further into the ancient maze of rooms, winding through a butcher’s room, where
they would let blood congeal in the center gutter for a few days before
scraping it up and eating it as blood pudding, and several miniscule lodging
rooms before being instructed to sit in a quarantine room that was maybe 200
square feet in size.
I’m infinitely
glad that germs can’t live on wood and dirt for very long, because no sooner
had we sat down in the room than the guide closed the door firmly and informed
us that we had contracted the Black Plague and were confined to the plague room
for several weeks quarantine. (Which is exactly what happened during the
plague.)
He sat down in
the front of the room and began to speak slowly in a boring, monotonous tone of
voice.
“There was no
television, you had no books, you couldn’t go outside or even leave the room.
All you had to entertain you was telling each other stories occasionally and
worrying about your impending death.”
He then
proceeded to play a tape that had a scary story of a haunting, and, near the
end at the climax, slammed his wooden walking stick on the ground, causing all
of us to jump out of our skin and Maggie to impulsively sock me in the arm.
One of the
creepier rooms we visited after was that of a little girl named Annie who died
alone after being taken from her parents to prevent her from giving them the
plague at just seven years of age. The room had a mountain of stuffed animals
and dolls that had been brought by visitors for the lonely little girl, who, a
Japanese psychic said, was the most powerful and depressed presence in the entire
close. The toys were covered in varying amounts of dust, staring silently in
all directions in a manner that seemed to multiply the loneliness of the little
girl they had been left for instead of alleviating it.
Other Photos
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| Maggie and I both stopped to take a photo of this sign, then said almost simultaneously "It's funny because my dad's name is Bill!" Then we started to suspect that we were actually the same person. |
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| Maggie with a cannon thinking "I wonder if I could fire this without getting caught..." |
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| The dog cemetery at the castle |
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| The Great Hall |
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| At the castle |
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| So Maggie can hover apparently. |
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| Golden Edinburgh |
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| It started to feel like fate that we went to Edinburgh together... |
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| The coincidences were eerily numerous, though to clarify, Maggie made it out of the castle alive. |
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| The rails that ran through the city. |
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| A Winter Wonderland was running in front of the Scott Monument, a monument that had been built in honor of Sir Walter Scott. |
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| Looking up at the old town at twilight |
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| "Does my new ring bring out my eyes?" |
RLO - No Tipping! (And I’m not talking
about cows.)
In America,
broke college students figure out what eight to 10 percent of the price of
their meals is and add it to their mental total before ordering to make sure
they can afford food at restaurants since tipping is an unwritten requirement.
The only occasions where I have left the table without leaving a tip have been
with family members who refused to tip because the service was so abysmally
bad, and even then I felt so guilty I almost snuck back in to leave a few bucks
under the saltshaker.
In the UK
though, tipping is optional, and isn’t done nearly as compulsively or
frequently. Although I feel slightly bad for waiters and waitresses, my budget for
each day had ten to 15 pounds more in it for not having to tip, which made me
infinitely happy each time I sat down to order food.
Londonisms
Slagging off - complaining about somebody
Typewritten - typed
Sod this - Screw this
Came round - came over (i.e. “My friend came round the
other day.”)
Off you pop - off you go
Indicator - blinker
