I've never, ever experienced a city like Edinburgh - and that's pronounced Edinborough, for those of you, like myself, a bit out of practise with the Scottish brough. It's hard to describe the city, since it's really more of a collection of towns which kept bumping into each other rather than a a city with a consistent sense of identity. The most glaring example of this is the topographical complexity of it all, which is dominated by two ancient, volcanic mountains plopped down in the middle of everything. On one of them (Castle Rock) we find Edinburgh Castle, which, if I'm not mistaken, has it's roots in the 12th century. Today, it's picturesque, but not all that interesting - they use it as a military base. My friend Hannah, with whom I stayed while I was in the city, told me not to bother paying to go inside, so instead we climbed up the hill at night and had a spectacular view of the city. From that vantage point, we were in the middle of the original walled city, surrounded by the Flodden Wall built in the 16th century after city residents became paranoid about another English attack after the Battle of Flodden. Unfortunately for the Edinburgers (I just coined that - does that work?), the wall was only one mile by one-fourth of a mile, and absolutely no one wanted to live outside of it. This wasn't a big problem, until the city became one of the most populous in Europe in the 17th century. At that point, the residents started digging down, making a creepy "underground city" (more on that later), and building up, creating some of the first skyscrapers at around 14 stories. Thankfully at about the same time, the British were basically in control of everything anyway, so they built a bridge over the loch in the middle of the city and built the New Town just outside the wall, which looks a lot like London, and opened things up a bit.
Near to my friend's dorm is Arthur's Seat, a really, really big hill which is covered in lush, green golfing grass. It's the epitome of the craggy Scottish landscape, and offers great views over the city. It's name actually comes from the corruption of some Scottish gaelic construction, but it's fun to think that it refers to King Arthur. You can literally be in a Starbucks one minute, swing by the local H&M, and ten minutes later be hiking in the middle of this wind-ravaged, rocky, natural park. It used to belong to the royal family as the hunting grounds attached to Holyrood Palace, the Queen's official residence when she's in Scotland, but it's open now. The palace was pretty cool, too, as it was the former home of Mary Queen of Scots, and is now the site of the Queen's famous Garden Party. From the top of Arthur's Seat (which my friend and I were nearly blown off of - we've got a picture of us hanging on to our jackets, which are sticking out parallel to the ground while we were pelted by mist yet, strangely, didn't get wet - welcome to Scottish weather...) I could see the coastline and the seaport of Leith, still all part of Edinburgh. On the way down, we passed through Duddingston, an ancient little village in the heart of the city at the base of the former hunting grounds, with, they say, the oldest pub in Scotland. This is in the middle of a very modern city!
This is the famous café where JK Rowling started writing the Harry Potter books. I became a bit disillusioned with her when I saw the view out of the back of the place (see picture below), which spoke volumes as to the inspiration for much of her work. It's OK, though, I love the books anyway.
That's Edinburgh Castle in the background. Click on this guy.
I also made my way to Roslin, a little town in the country outside of the city made famous by the book The DaVinci Code and the recent movie adaptation with Tom Hanks. In it you'll find Rosslyn Chapel, which is without a doubt one of the most magical places I've ever been. It's a chapel that was constructed through a partnership between the Knights Templar (an ancient religious order) and (perhaps) the Freemasons in the middle of the 15th century, and every single surface in it is covered in exquisite carvings, codes, and secret meanings. There are, obviously, hundreds of legends to go with it all, but perhaps the most intriguing is that the Holy Grail, or perhaps the body/head of Christ, is hidden in the secret chamber under the chapel that they found with sonar but which no one can seem to find a way into. I was lucky enough to be late for the tour, so I had the whole outside of the chapel to myself while 500 tourists packed into the church, and got in there again when it was nearly empty. Afterwards, I wandered around the graveyard and countryside, down to the crumbling Roslin Castle, hidden in the woods near a brook. It was pretty surreal. They are not happy to let you take pictures inside the chapel, but here's one from Wikipedia:
Now, originally, I was supposed to travel to Edinburgh with three friends from my program and my friend Steve who's in Oxford for the year, but through a series of events, I ended up flying with only one friend of mine from the program here in Granada, who was also going to visit a friend studying in the city. We got off the plane, and since I had a hotel for that first night by myself, decided that we would all meet up later in the night. That was before I realized that neither of the cellphones I had with me would work, and that I had no way to call anyone. I ran into a Boots pharmacy, the only thing open at around 10:00 at night there, and asked to buy a phonecard. Thirty minutes and several renditions of "All I Want for Christmas" by Mariah Carey later, they had located one for me (apparently, in Edinburgh as in much of Europe without the benefit of Thanksgiving as a buffer, the Christmas decorations have been up since September, and the night that I stopped in was a special "VIP Shopping Evening," the only reason the store was open). Not that my phonecard helped me to call Julianne, because her phone didn't work either. Needless to say, that first night I had a beer and cheeseburger in a pub by myself, and I resigned myself to not seeing my friend for the weekend. However, after I toured the chapel and had walked around a while, I was hungry, and in need of a pub. I stopped at the only option in town, and was shocked while sitting at the bar to notice Julianne and her friend walk in the door. It was the one and only time I saw her that weekend, but the coincidence, the fact that we met up in a tiny pub in a tiny town outside of the city, was creepy.
What else happened that weekend? I saw the James Bond movie because it was released in the UK before anywhere else and, finally, was a movie that was not dubbed, but the script was bad and it was more like a Bourne Identity movie than a Bond flick. Worth seeing, but a little disappointing. We went on a ghost tour of some of the underground vaults beneath the city where plague victims were thrown and where the poor lived when the city became overpopulated. It was more informative than scary, except when we were in one room in particular, where there is said to lurk the "Southbridge Entity," and it was really, really cold. Spooky. Hannah and I cooked twice, the first time improvising with some chicken and herbs that I didn't eat much of because I was full from the pub but was still quite tasty, and the next morning a lovely tomato and cheese omlette with crumpets. I was impressed with our skills. I also discovered that I own a drug store in the city.
I think I enjoyed Edinburgh more than any other city I've visited in Europe on this trip. It's got an amazing combination of city and country, mountain and sea, creepy-spooky-scary-Halloweeny architecture and stories about body-snatchers, and lovely, warm people. It was a good time.
