January 21st, 2019

Hey there,

Travelogue. Scotland part II

Have always been curious about Scotland but it was never really high on the list of places to go.  As you can probably tell with part I, that was a mistake and that our time here has been fantastic so far.  The impetus for us being here at this time happened exactly one year prior as we are sitting in our hotel room in Bilbao watching CNN and they are showing New Years preparations from around the globe and there is a segment on what happens in Edinburgh this time of year.  Betty and I are both fascinated by what we see and the gears are set in motion at that moment.

We hit Edinburgh late morning of the 30th and needed to pick up our tickets to the events.  The parties over this time in the city are billed under the name Hogmanay, which is a Scottish word for the last day of the year.  There are all kinds of happenings going on and we secured spaces for two of them: The Torchlight Procession the night of the 30th and New Years Street Party on the 31st.  We had been getting email warnings to get our tix early cause there were potential lines expected the day of the event.  Navigated to the ticket center and not only was there no line, but the procurement process was so seamless that it boded well for the happenings to come.  Dropped our bags at the hotel and I took the rental car back while the moms did laundry.

After some relax time, we were off for Torchlight, which is what we saw on CNN a year before.  They sell 20,000 passes and this mass of people walk a mile together and end up in Holyrood for music and fireworks.  That seems like a lot of people with fire to be safe and sane, but this Hogmanay group had it down.

You get your passes for one of three entry points, grab your torches at the gate and then wait your turn.

 A ton of festive humanity and we heard a ton of accents. We were about half way back from the start of the parade

 Periodically, we'd move up about 10 yards or so and as we neared the street saw how they were managing the traffic.  Each of the three lanes would let a hundred or so people into a pen and they would start lighting the torches and passing the flame back.

 Took about an hour for us to get our turn.  The torches are similar in size but are not the Pier 1 Tiki Neo-Nazi variety.  These are burlap and beeswax and are similar to giant candles.  In the information guidelines for the night, they said to wear old clothing as the wax can drip.  At the end of the night, the left sleeve of my coat has a good load of wax on it.  Wasn't too upset and actually thought it was a cool memento until I am wearing the coat a few days later and my London friend says it looks like I had a hand shandy.  Never heard that term before but understood and loved it immediately.  If you can't figure out what it is, there is always urban dictionary.

Torchlighting.

It's about a mile to the park and the sights and sounds of happy families, including ours, were joyous.

Oink

 Think this is my favorite snap from the trip

 I didn't even hate the sound of bagpipes...a first.

 The Boy posted some photos on Instachat or whatever and he received a ton of comments from his UVA buddies about how natural he looked with a torch and other Charlottesville protest ribbing.

The organizers shepherd the first of the torch bearers that reach the park into an outline of Scotland.  This photo from the Hogmanay Facebook site shows it and you can see the line of light stretching back into the city.

When we hit the park there is a big stage and some band is covering The Proclaimers '500 Miles'.  It might have been the actual Proclaimers now that I look at the old video.

It seemed to go on forever and we joked that they have been playing it for the last two hours yet all the Scotts continue to chant along to the chorus

The stated roots of the torchlight tradition are of Viking origin but feels like this is just a reason to party.  A good one for sure.  We beat a retreat before the fireworks to miss the crowd and try to find something to eat.  We found a burger joint that looked popular but wasn't too long a wait and settled in.  Our clan hadn't had dinner and we threw down while our traveling partners had a sandwich before and just got a snack.  I have never seen nor heard of this before but now see it everywhere...halloumi cheese.  Lady Grey got the halloumi salad or something.  Is this the new poke or something?

We get home kinda late and I am up flipping the channels and come across one with two ladies standing on a stage and they are naked.  I know that showing boobies on British TV is a long standing tradition from watching Monty Python on PBS in the 70's.  Have to see where this show is gonna go and it is immediately apparent that it is a nude dating show cause the next seen is of a dude, totally naked, penis and all, talking to the host and telling him which one of the girls he is going to choose.  This is a totally nude dating show on regular TV.  He picks the girl, the other girl has the post edit interview, still in the nude, and the show ends.  WTF?  I don't learn the name but ask our Brit friends about it later.  They know it well.  It is a dating show and is called Naked Attraction.  The way it is played is the contestant, sometimes a guy or a girl, is shown a group of the opposite sex.  They are naked but the initial reveal is their naked bodies from the waste down only.  The contestant has to pick out a 1/2 dozen to move to the second round based only on looking at their hoo-haws or vah-jay-jays.  Full nude is next and then the ever important interview round.  You can look this stuff up on YouTube and it is not tiled out.  Remarkable.

Next day comes and our first appointment isn't until 2pm, so the morning is declared free to sleep in.  Think everyone wanted that as it hadn't been offered.  Betty and I send a note that we're gonna take a stroll and rec'd no reply.

It was a brilliant morning and we tooled around the old new town (new old town?) and scoped out the party grounds for the night.  We texted again as we find a place for brunch and our kids dragged their butts over for a proper Scottish breakfast.  Scottish breakfast is exactly like English breakfast, complete with beans and tomatoes, but you also get a nice dollop of haggis.  Yum.  Still no sight of Lady Grey or Chiquita.

2pm rolls around and we meet in the lobby to go meet our walking tour guide for the afternoon.  Chiquita shows up but ol' Lady Grey is down.  Seems the halloumi cheese grabbed her by the boo-boo and she's been in the bathroom since 3am.  Had been dismissive of the halloumi cheese craze and felt vindicated.  It's gonna be hard not to laugh at all you suckers that eat the poke when they yank a 12 foot parasitic worm out of your intestines.

So it is just the 5 of us this afternoon, which actually worked out in one way as we were all able to fit into one of the cool black taxis together.

We met our guide Stuart at the appointed time.  Stuart was an older gentleman and as with a lot of those types, keeping up their pants is an ongoing concern.  First thing he does upon meeting us is to stop and give his belt a healthy tug, leaving the leather sticking out in hilarious fashion.  Nice chap.

We start in and he is telling us about this and that.  We do a bunch of these tours and getting into rhythm with the guide takes a few minutes.  Stuart has an interesting cadence and early in the tour we are at the foot of Blarney Castle.  The Castle is on this huge rocky outcrop and he explains that it is actually the plug of an extinct volcano.  Cool.

It was here that "it" went down.  Stuart is in the middle of his remarks and Betty interjects something.  She will later claim that it was an earnest historical query.  We all recall it being a quip along the lines of 43 self proclaimed "hilarious tweets that sum up shopping at Costco" variety.

Stuart stops and says that he "prefers his guests to listen to his information until he is finished and then ask their questions."  I think the kids say it best when they go "Snap!".  Betty is visibly shaken.  She refuses to say anything else near Stuart the rest of the tour and claims that he is equal parts racist against Asians and dismissive of women.  Stuart did something that day that I have not seen in the 31 years I have known Betty.  He shut her down (up?).

While awkward, we pushed on and while he was a bit of a curmudgeon, I rather liked him and he gave us a ton of insight into Edinburgh's history and the people that made it.  Some highlights:

- David Hume was a philosopher that influenced the American founding fathers.  Ben Franklin was a frequent guest.  Adam Smith was also in his hey day at that time.

- Robert Louis Stevenson is a treasured son of Edinburgh and we popped into a museum dedicated to him.  I knew (but never read) some of his books like Treasure Island, but was unaware that he also wrote Dr. Jeckle and Mr Hyde.  Stuart told us the story of the man that inspired that tale...a man by the name of Deacon William Brodie who was a respected councilman and locksmith.  Brodie would make an extra set of keys and was a huge thief who was ultimately caught and hanged.  The town was small then so we saw where all these things went down.  Stuart didn't think much of politicians and often said of the things in town that were messed up how it was the councilmen's doing, which became a refrain we would repeat often.

- Stuart took some extra time explaining The Giles Cathedral.  Prominent reformist John Knox preached there (and was buried next to it in what is now a parking lot...he is supposed to be under space # 23).  There was back and forth between the Catholics and Protestants (of course) and while the Protestants won the day, the Catholics held onto this property.  For a while.  Stuart was quick to point out that while they call this a cathedral, it isn't.  There is no bishop attached to it and the owners use the term so they can get people to come inside.  Not only that, but it was built on the cheap and that the vaulted ceilings don't align, things aren't centered, etc.  Stuart said we could go in but that he has been banned from entrance as he insists on telling his tour guests the real truth behind the facade.

- Most of the tour took place along the Royal Mile, which is the stretch of old town leading down from the castle.  It is said to resemble a fish with the Mile being the spine and off shoot alleyways resembling the little bones.  Each close would have been dedicated to a different industry back in the day and now house domiciles or cool bars and such.

- The old town was cramped and sewage was atrocious to the point that Edinburgh had the highest mortality rate of any town in Europe with the usual suspects of typhoid, cholera, etc. being the main culprits.  A couple hundred years ago, the rich set off across the little lake nearby and created the new town.  Things got better for the rich but the poor languished for many generations more in the cramped quarters.

- The little lake in between has since been filled in and it is now the rail station, but for 400 years, one of the fun activities they would do in it was drown witches.  7000 of them of those 4 centuries.

- Hitler loved architecture and said not to bomb Edinburgh (and some other cities) as he wanted them intact for when he took over.

- And JK Rowling took a lot of inspiration from the city when writing Harry Potter.  It is lost on my, but apparently Diagon Alley is said to be from this street in town.-

 And Hogwarts is said to resemble the Harriot School.

This is the Giles and you can easily see how off center it is.  Next day we are walking past it and we hear a dude say how gorgeous it is when taking a picture.  We were gonna stop and tell him what's what but gave each other a knowing glance and walked on.

After Stuart we walk past the burger joint from last night and take this photo making fun of the halloumi inspired tummy troubles of Lady Grey.

We have time for a nap and then head out to the Hogmanay New Year's Street Party.  It's about a five minute walk from our hotel and the crowds are getting think.  Lady Grey rallies and joins us but is looking even more pale than usual.

We get past the entrance and grab our whisky.  They gave each adult an airplane bottle of Johnnie Walker Black to ring in the new year.  How thoughtful.  The kids are itching to ditch us and immediately do.  The Boy and Chiquita are of age and Babydoll is all for hanging with them.  The moms and I tool around and see the spectacle.  We get some food, ride the Ferris wheel and admire the freaks that are walking around...both as part of the show and otherwise.

Extremely well done.  I read they sell 70,000 tickets to this and were sold out.  Lines for food and drinks were short and the security was ample but unobtrusive.  The crowd was boisterous, and both well behaved and lubricated.  The moms are off doing something and am standing in the crowd and behind me a woman gets on a rise and shouts at the top of her lungs, "John!".  I turn around and see she doesn't mean me, and so do the two guys standing next to me.  One of them says "My name is John" and the other guy says, "Me too."  I chime in that my name is John as well and we all toast and hug each other.  It was that kind of crowd.

They also had three stages of music going throughout the night.  I did my homework and none really sounded like they were in my genres.  There were video screens with quite good speakers set up all over and they would check in on the different stages from time to time showing a song or two.   One guy that did reach out and grab me was Gerry Cinnamon playing this song 'Sometimes'.

Great song...listened to more of him post trip and didn't care for it, but am infatuated with this track.  I dove in to watch him for a while and they are apeshit over this guy.  Watch that video and you'll see the entire crowd singing the entire song along with him at full voice.

We agreed to meet up with the kiddies at 11:45 to ring in the New Year together.  Kids have been off for about 3 hours with money and easily accessible alcohol and the moms and I were curious to see the state they were in.  

Not too bad but Boy and Chiquita had definitely been served.  The Boy is a year and a half into college and he seems to know his booze limits.  Chiquita told her mom that she only went to the bar twice, implying that she only had two drinks, but the Boy confides later that saying she went to the bar twice doesn't mean she only had two drinks.  Still, she is coherent and appears to be in a good way.  Babydoll is watching it all go down and learning.  At one point a little after midnight I hear Boy telling her how lucky she is to have the opportunity to go out clubbing and such in Taiwan before she heads off to college as a lot of the kids that get there have no clue and drink themselves into dangerous states.  "There would be an ambulance at the dorm every other weekend" he tells her.  Was lovely to see some good advice being shared amongst the kids.

As for me around midnight?  Betty isn't a boozer and Lady Grey was in no condition to throw down, so I got their Johnnie Walker bottles.  Also had the wee drams from Cardhu on hand and then purchased a couple of the lovely ginger ale and Johnnie's they were selling at the bar so by midnight, I had just the right swerve on.

From the morning scouting expedition, we found a nice spot to watch the really good fireworks show over the Castle that rang in 2019.

The moms were done, but the kids and I still had some gas so we hung out.  Our spot was a hundred meters or so from the exit and in front of one of the cool video screens with speakers that were thumping hard.  The screens would show the crowd while dance music played and the whole street became a little disco of sorts.  The Boy and Chiquita not only knew all the songs, but all of the words too, which was very surprising coming from the Boy.   I played along...a couple of the songs had samples from old timey tunes like Guns and Roses, so was able to bob and weave appropriately.  And then they played 'Africa'.  And the kids knew the shit out of that tune too and we all screamed along with it.  Can't remember where but read something about how you never know what song or cultural piece of significance is ultimately going to make it through to generations in the future.  That freaking 'Africa' by Toto is what comes out of the early 80's is something Nostradamus would never have predicted.

That hour or so hanging out with the kids was fun.  Dancing, yelling and hugging all the folks in the crowd was close to perfect for me.

We decide to head back and the hilarity continues.  Some locals are having fun on a sculpture of two giraffes with one of the guys able to mount one like he is riding a horse.  The sculpture is pretty tall and he has had a few and can't get off and instead of his friends helping him, they steal his shoes.  We're all hooting and hollering and one of the ladies with them tells me how awful it is for us Yanks to think that the Scotts are just a bunch of shoe stealers.  We do.

Have mentioned before but not for a while that I am a big Greg Proops fan.  Seen his act a few times over the years and a have not missed his podcast since 2012.  He is wickedly funny and we have a lot of the same interests as we are both lovers of baseball, Funk music and women that are strong, smart and confident.  In his stuff he talks about his time living in the UK and mentions how great Edinburgh is often.  I have never reached out to him on any level even though he is very accessible but decide to ask via email if he has any recommendations for us in town.  Dude writes me back almost immediately with a bunch of late night fish and chip and places to get drinks suggestions.  Not only that, but he remembers one the next day and shares that too.  Such a nice fellow.

I researched locations of the places he suggested and one of the sleazy fish and chip joints is directly across from our hotel and they are open for biz at 2am.  We get in line, share some more laughs with our fellow fish and chip devotees, then devour the greasy goodness before calling it a night.  Good times.

We had one more day in Edinburgh.  We booked this hotel first in our plans but later wanted to leave on New Years Day so we could get to London sooner figuring it was good to travel when most stuff was closed.  We couldn't change our reservation so had to stick around and am glad we did cause Edinburgh is happening this time of year and everything was open anyway.  In communicating with tour guide Stuart leading up to the trip, he offered suggestions on what we could do New Year's Day and he said that the Castle was open.  We booked tix for 1:30p as I figured most would want to sleep in from partying the night before.

The plans changed a bit though.  Mr Proops told me of a bar at the top of the National Science Museum we should check out and have the lobster if we could afford it.  When Betty and I were walking about yesterday, we were trying to spot where the museum was visually and was looking at the map when a local lady with her young daughter came up to ask if she could help.   We tell her what we are looking for and she points it out and then asks her daughter if she likes that Museum.  Her eyes get big and she says "Dolly is there".  Dolly is the first cloned mammal, the breakthrough occurring at a local university and her body is here.  We are pumped and find that not only is the museum open at noon but is also free.  I'm sure the kiddies would have preferred to stay snoozing longer, but they could not resist seeing Dolly

On the walk over, an incident happened...

 Haven't mentioned Starbucks or us playing PunchBucks this trip, but we have been playing a spirited game throughout.  There have been Starbucks everywhere...tons in the big cities and at least one in every little hamlet or burgh.  There was one around the corner from our hotel on the route we had to go every day, and this morning The Boy calls it and punches me before he even saw it.  Outrageous.  I wasn't apoplectic, but close, and the group sided with him not out of reason but just to aggravate me.  Was describing our game later and how it is now on my things to do list to codify this game, perhaps even creating laminated cards to put into your wallet, and they suggested I share this brilliant game with the Starbucks corporation.  In a more innocent time (re. violent,), think this would be huge, but in the PC world of today, probably would be considered an assault.

The National Science Museum was exceptional.  Lots of interesting things to see for all tastes and everyone likes things that are interactive.  I had a robot write my name in blocks.

 Dolly of course.

And the bar that Mr Proops recommended provided exceptional views.  I had a wee dram but didn't have time for the lobster.  Note that once again, we were provided the gift of spectacular weather.

 Edinburgh Castle is in the distance in those shots so hoofed it over for our 1:30pm slot.  It also provided lovely 360 views.

Perhaps it was due to the fact that we went pretty hard last night (or were still nursing the side affects of halloumi cheese poisoning) or that we had seen one too many castles, but none of us found it to be all that.  Go if it's your only castle stop, but would say that it's ok to skip it and spend more time about town.

Day was starting to fade and we walked down to that Diagon Street so the Potter types in our group could look at magic wands or something.  We had a late dinner reservation but were in the mood for a snack.  In a conversation with Stuart yesterday I mentioned I was in the midst of a haggis obsession and he mentioned a spot that serves it up right.   Lady Grey was not in a position to put offal into her body and Chiquita is a finicky eater and will not let it pass through her lips, but the Imbros are game for adventure when it comes to eating so off we went.  

I give you The Arcade Haggis and Whisky House.

Haggis and whisky?  Damn...we go in and a table opens up right next to the fireplace and we are feeling good.  They have a lovely selection of whisky so I order up a dram of the 18 year old Cardhu cause it seemed like the right thing to do.

We didn't want to overeat so we got an order of the Princess Diana Haggis to share.

Kinda hard to read so let me tell you about it in my sexiest food porn voice....Take a tour with three different layers including mashed potatoes, turnip and haggis of course! With specially made to order sauce of cream, tomatoes, onions and Drambuie liqueur.

Holy guacamole was it good.  Delicate, creamy, savory...I am tingly right now just thinking about it.  That is a crap picture and it has the awful beet salad that Betty insisted on getting in the background.  I  kick myself for not getting a proper photo.  The ultimate haggis experience and as it is possible that I will never get to eat it again, so glad that this was the last I ever tasted.

Dinner that night was fine and only mention it cause it was another Greg Proops recommendation.  He said if we want "shitty old school Italian" to go to Bar Napoli.  That may sound like an negative review to some, but knew exactly what he was talking about.  The staff had been there forever and it was loud and chaotic, but a perfect way to eat Italian food

We hit the train station early the next day for the 4.5hr ride to London.  We had seats of course but not everyone on board did, particularly the crazy lady with the yappy dog on our carriage.  4.0 Travel at its finest.

Since we've left, have been thinking about the trip.  Babydoll has said a couple times how Scotland is underrated.  I enjoyed Ireland and the people made me rethink a lot of the prejudices and preconceptions I had about them.  It was Scotland however that really touched me.  The beauty of the highlands, interesting countryside, whisky and haggis, and Edinburgh was one of those towns that has it all going on.  Said a couple times on the road and often since that I found it magical.  

See you next time