Day 2 Monday 2025 06 30: Off to Edinburgh

 Why is it, exactly, that the pronunciation of Edinburgh leaves out quite a few vowels and then adds in some syllables? This is one of those mysterious things about the Old Country. Even if this is hardly MY old country, it's somebody's, so it's reserved the right to be stubborn, idiosyncratic, and blithely mysterious. Something about wandering a city that has seen both the Bubonic Plague and Eurovision 2023 seems to make a place where anything is possible.

 

 But I'm getting ahead of myself. Monday is the day we finally leave the unreasonably warm city of London to a city that absolutely no one outside of a 19th century returning exhibition of the Canadian Arctic, would consider warm, Edinburgh. 

 

It's down the sauna like stairs, to avoid the sauna (without saftey controls) like elevator, finally out into the clear air of morning London. Which, actually, yeah, this isn't Sherlock Holme's London, nobody is dying from consumption of miners lung here, it is pretty clear and nice.  Into the King Cross station, which, as I'm informed by my son, who is only slightly excited (he's well past being ACTUALLY excited about this sort of news), there is a Harry Potter tie in. The 9 and 3/4 Platform. 

 

 We first have a bite at Pret A Porter, which seems to
be on every street corner. Some corporate branding officer who is also a history buff or anyone who has kept the mildest interest in the last 1000 years of European history must wake up every day just tickled pink that the most frequent establishment in London for casual fare has the Frenchest name ever. That and it's the  most English and straightforward translation. Ready to carry, if high school french has not failed me (it has almost no opportunity to do so, so I'd be shocked if it took this chance to do so).

 

 So after we take a bite, my wife and my son go try and check out this 9 and 3/4 platform. They are promptly (and I'm sure, politely) informed that no pictures are allowed. It's not 'open'. This is literally a  sign, on a brick wall. 

 

 We pass by later and see there is a whole line up for it, with a real photographer, and someone who tosses a Hogwarts branded scarf in the air as if the person posing is really rushing through an imaginary portal under... again, a sign, on a brick wall. That the line up THEN follows into a Harry Potter store, with no other way out is genius/sinister/what are you gonna do, it's capitalism!

 

 I get both me and boy a Cornish Pasty because somehow I've heard all about these but every culture has 'meat and things wrapped in flour product', but these ones look like they were made to fuel a coal miner during a snow storm afer a famine. And maybe not a middle aged man strolling through his vacation from his real job of.. sitting in a chair typing on a computer. 

 

 ONTO THE TRAIN. We had hoped to see many beautiful sights, and we did. But it's a very long train ride. And much of the track is between embankments, I'm sure to reduce noise and other..engineering things that I wouldn't understand. But what this means is occasionally we get breathtaking/quaint/lovely views then just many more kms of hedges, embankments, levies? 

 

 The main take away was holy cow alot of England is just brick. They got brick and stone and more stone with a bit of brick. Certainly gave all the towns and villages we zoomed past a feeling of permanence. Also of places that were tempered in the flames of the industrial revolution. 

 We finally get to Edinburgh. The train station is packed and we make our way outside. Our AirBnB is up a flight of stairs (in almost all our travel, our place is always up a flight of stairs. Or maybe that's just what I remember, hauling our luggage up those stairs.) The smell is musty as one would expect from a concrete stairwell that was made around the time when transatlantic steamship crossings were a pretty nifty idea. The stairs each had a bit of a worn divot in it. I don't know the regular wear and tear of industrial concrete stairs, but made me think these stairs are much older that I would think? Or maybe everyone in this city wears hobnailed boots, I dunno.

 

 Overall impression of Edinburgh so far. Old. Stone. Quaint? I put the question mark there because everything that the movie "Braveheart" has told me about Scottish folks, I'm not sure if they'd appreciate being called quaint. Probably would REALLY not appreciate that I use "Braveheart" in any of my cultural benchmarking. But my only other referent would be Trainspotting, and, if I remember correctly that happens in Glasgow, so wildly historically inaccurate action movie it is.

  

Our apartment overlooks a lawn bowling green established in the late 1800's. I'm just going to go with quaint as all get out, here. 

 So we settle in, and it's time for a walk about. 

 It is alot of cobble streets. Double checking then getting it wrong when crossing  the street. There is something about where adn how they place their traffic lights that makes jay walking even more dangerous than it otherwise would be. I have no natural sense of where to look and check anymore. That, compounding with the fact that locals jaywalk all the time, (walk signals being more of an after-the-fact suggestion than an actual command), and the whole 'oh yeah they drive on the LEFT side of the street', then dolloped on top with the fact that for some reason, the timing of the walking signs just takes FOREVER. Well, al this adds up to a feeling like you are walking with two left feet all over the city. 

 

 We find the GreyFriars, which is a cemetery, famous for a rather loyal dog. It's also the site of the signing of the National Covenant, a decree in which supporters of the Scottish Church (presbyterian) opposed reformations of its doctrines by the English King Charles. There is proof of the bloody rebelliona nd suppression of this all over Edinburgh. Perhaps not talked about since most of Western Europe and North America, very broadly, do not spark civil war and unrest over biblical doctrine. At least anymore. 

Victoria Street

 We went to some of the classic tourists spots in our quick walk about town. The sort where everyoen is busy taking selfies. I attempt to find some pubs with tradintional Scottish folk music. They are all comically packed. I lack the extroversion or confidence to hang out that close to my fellow man, and my partner is not a bar person at all. So we wrap up the day, getting ready for a full day of Edinburgh, and all it's hidden syllables