Side Note: Edinburgh

The Edinburgh Exchange – Part 2

Scarcely four days after Tarra had come to visit me in Amsterdam, I hopped on a plane from Schiphol to go visit her in Edinburgh. Or at least, I tried to hop on the plane, but was delayed for 40 minutes by some “technical problems” (read: the plane in front of ours was running late and blocking our gate). At Schiphol you don’t pass through security until just outside your gate, and since they didn’t know for sure which gate we’d leave from, they made every single person on the flight stand in the security line while they tried to figure things out. Everybody took it fairly well, with the exception of a whiny Canadian woman in the line in front of me. She complained quietly but incessantly to her long-suffering companion – an Irish man who may or may not have been her husband – the entire time we waited.

Fortunately for me there was a young mother from New Zealand in front of the complainer. She looked very tired, but was still smiling gamely and playing with her adorable, blond, chattery little boy. That cuteness was probably the only thing that stopped me from going crazy listening to the obnoxious woman in front of me.

We finally got on the plane, though, and our flight went smoothly after that. There was a nice lady from Edinburgh on the plane next to me, and she recommended some things to do and see during my stay.

I navigated my through passport control and the tiny Edinburgh airport. I withdrew some money (in pounds!) and, per Tarra’s instruction, hopped on a bus to the center of town. Tarra’s Thursday classes didn’t end until 5:00, so I had planned to meet her at the Scott Monument, an old Gothic spire that stands in the middle of a pretty park. Because of my plane’s small delay, I only had to wait about 15 minutes, during which I took some pictures of my surroundings.

When Tarra arrived, she took me back to her flat by way of a scenic path along the Royal Mile (a big stone street full of restaurants and tourist shops that leads up to the Edinburgh Castle) and through a pretty park near a posh neighborhood that J.K. Rowling has been spotted in before.

Tarra fixed a delicious dinner of baked sweet potatoes with lots of harvesty spices and broccoli with a very British cheese called Wensleydale (Wallace and Gromit’s cheese of choice). After we ate we sat around and chatted with her some of her lovely flatmates until we got tired and went to bed.

Friday morning, after a hearty breakfast of porridge (oatmeal) made from good Scottish oats, we set off back to Old Town. Edinburgh is divided into Old Town, where all the roads are twisty and narrow and the buildings have a quaint, stony, hodgepodge feel, and New Town, which is a Victorian creation full of nicely gridded roads, pretty parks, and grand buildings set apart at more regular intervals. Tarra had class at the edge of Old Town in a giant gorgeous castle-like academic building that abuts the Royal Mile.

I left Tarra to her studies and walked back up a the narrow alleyway, or “close,” as the Scots say, to the Royal Mile, where I began to peruse the street at my leisure. I took pictures of some statues, walked up to the castle at the top of the hill, and ducked in and out of the tourist shops selling cashmere and tartan and shortbread.

Most of the shops sold postcards and key chains of different Scottish crests or coats of arms. I checked for my mom’s maiden name among them, but apparently “Sims” is not a touristy Scottish name. In true Scottish fashion, I was also regaled in pretty much every shop to a soundtrack of bagpipes blaring old and modern tunes. Some of the musicians had CDs for sale. “Red Hot Chili Pipers” sounded the most promising.

When Tarra was finished class she took me down a curving street called Grassmarket, where a bunch of more offbeat little shops and restaurants reside. We popped into a few stores selling old books or vintage clothes or artsy little trinkets, and then we stopped at Café Jacques for lunch (I had a baked potato topped with cheddar and baked beans – hearty, filling, and fabulously U.K.).

After lunch we explored a few more stores, by and far the best of which was Fabhatrix, an artsy little hat store crammed with all the crazy hats you could ever want. We had to try lots of them on, of course. They were definitely fabulous.

After we were done with Grassmarket Street, Tarra took me to Greyfriars Kirk – a pretty little church with a lovely cemetery in the churchyard. Local lore has it that a police officer was buried in the churchyard, but his little Skye terrier, Bobby, was so loyal that he stood watch over the grave every day for years. When Greyfriars Bobby died himself, he was also buried in the churchyard with a little memorial. This adorable tale has apparently become a popular children’s story in the U.K.

Tarra and I looked around inside the church, then spent awhile wandering in the cemetery.

After that we went back to Tarra’s room to regroup before heading to the Elephant House (the café where J.K. Rowling famously scribbled notes for Harry Potter on the napkins) to meet up with some surprise guests: The Hunts. Apparently Kristin’s family was visiting, and they had decided to come to Edinburgh for the day. They had spent all morning exploring the castle, and then they headed down to the Elephant House to meet up with Tarra and me.

The Hunts’ visit was whirlwind and kind of surreal. For me, it’s one thing to see a good friend in a foreign place, but quite another to see their family. My friends and I visit each other fairly often, but it’s not usually the case that our families come along for the ride. Mrs. Hunt seemed happy to see me, though. She hugged me and kissed my cheek more times in the span of two hours than she has in the four or five years I’ve known her daughter. “She was sleep-deprived and in full-on mom mode,” Kristin said when I mentioned it to her later. “But it’s not surprising.”

Eventually the Hunts had to be on their way, and Tarra and I had to get back to her flat for dinner and head out to see a student improv group that Tarra wanted to take me to (in response to me taking her to Boom Chicago). Sadly, when we got there, the show was sold out and we weren’t able to get inside. This was doubly frustrating because we had tried unsuccessfully all day to get tickets on the phone or computer, basically because the box office workers at the theater are slackers. We considered going out to try to do something else, but ended up just going back and having tea and snacks with Tarra’s friends and flatmates.

Saturday morning we went for breakfast to a restaurant called Always Sunday. There we had mini versions of a traditional Scottish breakfast consisting of about five different savory courses. I even tried some of Tarra’s (vegetarian) haggis. Not bad.

Then we went to National Gallery of Edinburgh, where I got my art museum fix for the weekend. We had lunch at the Gallery’s pretty restaurant – the Scottish Café and Restaurant. We ordered smoothies and a “cheese board” made up of four or five different cheeses, oat crackers and pepper chutney.

After that we headed into New Town and looked at the clean and organized side of Edinburgh. The weather was absolutely perfect that day, so we stopped to take lots of pictures.

We wandered around for awhile in New Town, past fancy boutiques and orderly churches, then headed back to the Royal Mile to for Chocolate Soup. Chocolate Soup is a café that sells all sorts of delicious chocolate concoctions. Tarra and I got “Hot Chocolate Sundaes” and a scrumptious brownie. The pictures speak for themselves.

Eventually we went to find a proper dinner, and settled on a vegetarian restaurant that we wandered past. After that, Tarra wanted to show me one of her favorite pubs – a fun and classy little place called the Brass Monkey. We stayed at the pub for quite awhile, joined by Tarra’s flatmate Claire. We talked and laughed and listened to music until it was late and we were tired, and then we set off for their flat and went to bed.

Sunday morning I took the bus back to the airport and flew back to Schiphol without any problems. I had to readjust to riding buses on the right side of the road and not being able to understand a lot of the conversation around me. It had been a bit of a surprise to me to see those things in Edinburgh, but it was a great visit.