Day 8 : 2025 07 06 : A last hurrah

  Day 8, our last day in Scotland that didn't involve alot of catching various modes of transport to get back to Canada. 

 

 This is the day we finally try haggis, that most Scot of foods. Coming from Asian descent, eating offal is just another day taht ends in 'y'. So I wasn't surprised to find I quite liked it. Again, one of those foods you want to reach for after been drenched in non stop rain and fog and cold and rain. I had a somewhat traditional breakfast, with the egs and sausage and the fried tomato. That's something I've tried a few times to reproduce, the properly fried tomato and all I get is a devastated mush of disappointment.

 

 With such a substantial breakfast it's time to have a last day of Edinburgh, the only way we know how. My wife finds places that have featured on websites and social media and are quite pretty and we walk there. Cobbled streets, sidewalks, walkways, it's sight seeing time.

 

 The first stop is a... curved area with flowers on the houses? I'm assured this is everything my partner was looking for. We take a few pictures and it's really the sort of place you go to see other people taking the same photo because they all saw the
same trend on social media. But it's also the sort of place where each unit sells for a blisteringly high price which can only be fueled by the sorts of people who understand 'money markets', 'derivatives', or have earnestly gotten someone else to believe in the latest tech hype.  

It's a LOT of walking over uneven cobbled streets. Me, being a practiced hand at Twisting My Ankle While Waiting in Line am flabbergasted I've not managed to do my tendons some serious damage this whole trip. I think at a certain age and after a certain tens of times rolling the ankle one either continues doing this or becomes hyper vigilant but always looks like someone walking while keeping a hobbyist amount of nitro glycerin in their pockets at all times: careful, stilted, and always looking at one's feet. 

This is a picture of a truck in what is sure to be one of the most rarest and expensive parking spots in all of Edinburgh and I only say that because it's painted an almost insistent colour of 'I'm just a regular fellow" workman's green. That and the "Range Rover" name on the hood.

We then walk along a canal rich in history and buildings and this sign which perhaps says something about the tax bracket of the people who live here. Well, the tax bracket or the median age, or both. But in any case the value of either would be 'rather high'. 

This is a very picturesque stream that runs somewhere in New Town. Any time I gaze at a body of water too close to urban centers I worry about seeing dead fish or some abandoned tires. Maybe a  crime scene just finishing up. There was the odd trash but it was suspiciously clean, for the most part. 

Here was an old mineral well. I assume this means an old mineral water well? But I went on a long detached diatribe about how this is a well for rocks when my son asked me, continuing on some fevered gag that I would not let up even after the several insistent eye rolls from him. A dad must respect The Craft, is all I have to say about that.

So this entire area, Dean's Village, used to have many water powered mills surrounding them. Just think, all these stone mills grinding wheat or barley and feeding these people for decades.. hundreds of years? That this river went from a necessity for life to just a 'pleasant thing to walk besides' is really fascinating. And this, one of the actual mill rocks preserved was one of the coolest things I saw this day. This actually produced food for folks, long, long since dead. These grooves guided the crushed grain to the outside! If having an undying fascination for this piece of historical stone makes me and over the hill middle aged dad well, well, actually that tracks so nevermind.

Then we get to the money shot, the pretty buildings hunched around a prettier stream. This building, amazingly, was a communal housing for all the out of work millers and the like, setup by the owner/founder of the newspaper The Scotsman. To ensure they didn't fall unto hard times. There were stipulations they went to church and the like, but, wow, it's the sort of civic largesse you pretty much never hear about anymore.

It starts to rain rather insistently. Yes, we know we are Scotland, don't need to rub it in our faces. We walk along this very verdant dell which has all sorts of things of interest. Not the least of which is this verdant dell used to be the site of the loch that used to border the city, the one that caught all the end results of "Gardy Loo's", if you catch my meaning.

We took refuge in the National Art Gallery. Which had many pieces of work that were painted. And that's the extent of my art history knowledge. I was aware that some of these pieces were very significant but besides the faintest glimmer of recognition from me I'm afraid the works of the masters were wasted on me. 

The only way to end the day is with some slightly overpriced, but beautiful pastries. It was a lovely end to our last day in Edinburgh, a final , understated meal, with absolutely no offal in sight.

Day 7 2025 07 05 : Castle Wedding

  Ah, day 7, the day of the wedding. As this blog pointedly avoids pictures of our faces, as a GenXer, I like to live in the fantasy that I'm anonymous on the internet, and would like to keep that lie alive. So with that in mind, this might prove to be a very short post. (I've in the intervening time, ceded this last die-hard internet belief, as I eventually print these blog posts into a book, and thought, "hey, wouldn't it be nice to see faces of my family in this book filled with endless diatribes and typos?")

 

This is the main reason for us traveling across the world. My friend's wedding. He's a younger fellow, in enterprise tech sales, has the sort of bright positive energy that makes you believe most things are possible, and all the worrisome things are hardly worth worrying about at all. He's always up for whatever is on offer and we always have a laugh. Although we were the older of the guests (outside of parent and uncle/aunt level guests) it was still a blast to be there and to experience all the magic that is weddings.

My buddy likes to do things up right. Where right is always bordering just this side of excess, and maybe a  bit over sometimes. But again, the things you are worried about are hardly worth worrying about, so it all makes sense.   Anyways he has his wedding in a castle because of course you're going to have your wedding in a castle.

It really is a beautiful venue. A bit of a lord's manor, where the cost of upkeep hardly justifies keeping it as a private residence and it spends most of it's time as venue for this or that soiree. It had magnificent grounds that I'm sure at some point employed generations of gardeners, and maybe a person who only dealt with the topiary.

The food was excellent, as you'd expect. The wedding itself was heartfelt and lovely. After they had a scotch tasting in the basement. But knowing my rather abysmal tolerance I limited myself to one. For the dancing section they had a Ceildh band. Which is, as I've repeated many times, like the bit in the Titanic when Jack nd Rose are dancing a kind of Celtic square dancing. Lines of men and women turning this and pivoting that. Doing this at speed and many, many times over until you're sweating past what you'd expect but having a great time.

Out in back there was a small path that led away from the main lawn to a small cute gate against a wall. Walking through opened up an even more enormous garden/lawn area. I don't know what people did with this much space back then. Look at suitors from afar, I imagine. Wonder what she is thinking of your proposal to see her every other Sunday to accompany her to tea under direct supervision of her mother? Have some time to ponder if the messenger crossing the lawn is bringing news that your latest set of merchant ships have perished in that nasty storm?

It was lovely to sit, though. Some sitting after our constant walks and tours and semi-hiking and more walks was a bit of luxury.  And look at that, it was a rather short post.

 

Day 6 : 2025 07 04 A Tour Of Fog

It's rainy, it's windy, there is kind of visibility you usually see in a airplane disaster film right before the co-pilot says 'these instruments can't be right..'. So, naturally, it's the perfect day to go on a 12 hour bus tour of the highlands. In our defense, this was the only day available, and relying on weather forecasts in Scotland that look any further than say, 15 seconds is just courting disaster.

We treck out to the, in retrospect, very clearly marked bus station building and take a smallish bus with a tour guide sporting a kilt and, as we find out over 12 hours, an indefatigable supply of anecdotes, stories and histories to regale us with.

The scenery was lush, if a bit obscured, the stories varied. One was about the Scottish mythology of the Kelpies. Horses that run along the shore of lochs and lure young children to ride on their back, then drag them to their watery grave and eat them. This, he reasoned, was the old timey answer to having a PSA about the dangers of playing near large lakes as children unattended. Night terrors and aversion to horses were just fanciful byproducts, I assume.

We then drove past some massive, 30 m tall Kelpies, which were supposed to represent the power and industry of Scotland. Meant to bring to mind the plough horses and canal horses working away. Apparently Kelpies were also very strong but I suppose it's of no use to mention you also made a 30m tall sculpture to the power of early childhood psychological trauma.  They were quite pretty, though.

Here is a sign at the first bathroom/food stop. Taken here to note that dogs were allowed everywhere. Buses, pastry shops, you name it, you would see a dog just chilling with their owner. It can only speak well of a country that allows dogs everywhere.

We saw aqueducts, or .. old train bridges. The tourist guide pointed this out specifically to tell us that, no this is not he one referenced int he Harry Potter movies.

There are many fantastic views and vistas which have clear parking areas that we simply zoom by, as the views that they are featuring as we pass them is some grass and very, very dense fog. We are making record time! Which is not something you want to hear when, in this case, the journey IS the destination.

One place we do stop that is literally and figuratively breathtaking is the Three Sisters. They really are as beautiful as you'd imagine in person. That and the storm level winds whipped cold rain across you face making it actually rather hard to catch your breath as you took it all in. It was some temporary respiratory problems well worth having.

Eventually we stop at a visitor's centre. It has a period era accurate thatched roof. Looking at the rain and wet and the darkness of the hut and thinking the most they'd have to read was maybe some Bible tracts, one can understand why families had four or more kids back in the day. In the building proper there was a cafeteria, a gift shop, and a very well plaqued presentation centre featuring the geology of the area. Apparently, and this is news to me, my plaque reading voraciousness draws a very solid, and emphatic line at reading Geology. Rocks, not so much, apparently.

We finally end up at Loch Ness, and are apparently the only people in the busload of 30 or so people who decline the boat trip. We wander about the charming town. My son, who has regained his appetite after having the memory of Gardy Loo! fade from his brain, has his lunch. Then asks for a second lunch. One of the few things I know I MUST do as a parent is feed my children. I oblige him with some fair trade fresh locally sourced fish and chips, which is a very long way of saying Expensive Fish and Chips. But his renewed appetite polishes that off without a wink.

At the town are these charming locks.. to be more accurate at the loch are these locks. Water elevators for folks going from one body of water to the next. We look about and wander over to the loch itself. It's remarkable clear. And featured some of the most fearless ducks, or, more accurately, some of the most well fed from tourist ducks ever. As they walked directly to us and kind of muddled about our feet.

It was then that our daughter, who was in Korea for a month, phoned us over.. some social media app. We had a lovely video call all the while wondering at the loch and the entirely too friendly ducks. It's still a marvel to me that here we are, in the middle of, if not nowhere then at least Rather Out of the Way. And she is in across the WORLD, and we are talking to her ina  VIDEO CALL. With maybe a 1 second delay. There are stil things that never cease to amaze me. And the ducks were pretty cool too.

This was some bar named after the Bothys. The only reason I took this picture was to remember to tell this neat fact. Bothys are stone huts scattered across the countryside, meant to be communal shelter for shepherds. But as the need to shelter shepherds in the middle of nowhere has dwindled, these have turned into just communal shelter for anyone camping about. They are not supplied with any, perhaps well water. And often there is someone else there. So you are sharing these stone cottages with strangers, other campers, in the middle of nowhere. Frankly sounds like the premise for a moderately successful horror franchise, but it's just what is done here. It was both a little unnerving and heartwarming at the same time. A little like the forward ducks, if I'm being honest.

Our last stop is at another tourist centre with a few genuine Hairy Highland Coos. Highland cattle with dashing bangs and the sort of charming horns that you realize are really quite lethal when you get up close. They apparently were originally black, but a few red ones were brought around for, I think some royalty. And the red heads exploded in popularity, leading them to be what we assume all Hairy Coos to be. Something like the modern day carrot. But again, with adorable bangs and disemboweling horns.

We end the day with burritos because when you travel sometimes you just have to go with the cheapest option. The Canadian dollar has never been strong and in Europe the sticker shock just kinda stays with you and you float in a financial half coma for most of the trip, dazed and in a fog not unlike the one we drove through for 12 hours.

 

Day 5 : 2025 07 03 : Arthur's Seat, Mary's Close

All regions have their own snobbery. People from Eastern Canada could never admit it was ever cold when visiting Western Canada. It might be 15 below with polar bears dying on the streets and they'd mutter something about 'this isn't REAL cold' and insist on keeping their shorts and sandals on. I'm sure people from nearer the equator could be in a literal magma river but if it was in the temperate zone of the Earth they'd insist this is child's play, as the first layers of their protective volcanic gear melted in front of their eyes.

So with Pacific North Westers, and maybe Canadians in general, we generally have a snobbish attitude towards mountains. We have the Rockies! And, well, an appreciable landmass of British Columbia is just.. mountain. So when we agree to go walk up the world famous Arthur's Seat to get a lovely view of Edinburgh we somehow scoff at such low a mountain. This is doubly ridiculous because I am not a hiker and get winded getting up from my office chair. But somehow muster enough blindness to self reflection to scoff when looking at Arthur's seat, saying 'that's not a real mountain'. What I didn't finish with was "I've seen real mountains, from my car, while driving past them". 

This is a walk with the bride and groom and bridal party and whoever trekked across the globe to be in Scotland for the wedding. A bit of banter and getting to know really close friends to your really close friend. It's a bittersweet reality of weddings, where you get along, but know that these interactions will likely be all there will be. Habits, age groups, life patterns being what they are.

We meet near the Scottish Parliament. It's.. (again, my knowledge of archicture stops at 'flying buttresses', and only because it's both a hilarious term and just one of those snappy quotes I remember from Disney's Beauty and the Beast (yes, it's the line Cogsworth says)).. interesting? Modern. Ecletic? Beyond my understanding.  As a Canadian, that's as far as I can go. I ask one of the groom's friends, a straight talking nurse from northern England, 'what is the deal with the wooden sticks by the doors?'. He, of course, just says right out that the whole Parliament is just dog ugly. He may have used more colourful language. I'm all for talking in local customs and traditions but abandoning our painful deference and politeness with some common sense is a line I simply will not cross. Interesting, is what it remains.

As we are waiting, my wife goes about looking at shops and just exploring. Me and my son sit by a park, relaxing. He's a big boy now, taller than me, full of quiet, deep currents of thought and introspection. He might start blurting out some random meme that is only funny to people who think Iron Man is like, an old movie; he might suddenly ask me what is the nature of international trade and currency fluctuations. Both are equally impenetrable to me, but for one I can at least pretend to know what I'm talking about.  Which is all to say, he's growing up. So it's always lovely to see the boy he was just pop up out of nowhere. Here he is, suddenly possessed with a need to save all the ladybugs and put them back in the grass. It might be followed up with a question about Roundup and it's impact on North American pollinator populations and their declines knock-on effect on the greater ecosystem .It might be followed by him reminded me the grasshoppers in A Bugs Life sounded like they were motorcycles. Deep currents.

We meet up with the rag tag group of wedding goers. And begin our stroll up the Very High Hill. It's pretty and lush on the way up, and admittedly, the internet does say it's an easy hill walk. So none of the Canadians have an opportunity to point out this dormant volcano is hardly a mountain. Not that we would, not sober, at least.

At the top are more rocks and absolute wind tunnel level of wind. You could do some aerodynamic drag tests on the latest sub compacts out of Honda up here. The view was great, though. It's a long walk down back into town, then a very very long and subtle walk up another hill. This was the after walk walk that I simply was not ready for. By the time we got to the after walk restaurant, poised on top of another hill, I was in a muck sweat. Old middle age man sweat. I can only think this is karmic retribution for my PNW snobbery about mountains.

There is a story here about Edinburgh being called the Athens of Europe or  somesuch, but I honestly can't really remember it, so you just get these  enigmatic pictures of Greek columns

More columns

Then a short break, possibly a nap, and off we were again to do a tour of Mary King's Close. A set of alleyways well preserved, named after a prominent seamstress of the area. The close had examples of how people lived and died in the 17th Century, with a tour guide who cosplayed a maid of the era. Cosplay is probably a wildly inaccurate term, however, this is one of those tours that did not allow photographs. Likely due to some corporate copyright reasons which only serves to make the one picture they do take on their own camera's outrageously expensive as well as zero pictures of the exhibit to tempt friends and colleagues on social media. Which is to say I'm not looking up the proper term out of a mild sense of spite.

Of the many memorable facts is that, yes, in those days, early in the morning or late at night was when they were allowed to throw all their waste onto the street. And being as there was no indoor plumbing I'll leave what 'waste' means up to the reader's imagination. As they threw it out, they'd say Gardee LOO! Which means watch out. And my high school French is enough to tell me it was a slow bastardization of garde de l'eau, or 'watch the water' (watch the waste that is.. watery). This would in turn run down the streets and fill up a loch that was nearby. Edinburgh became a place you could smell a ways off and earned the nickname Auld Reekie (which they say is old Scots for old smoky, but come on.. a cess pool of a lack within a stone's throw?). It was colourful details like this that would actually put my son's appetite off. My son, the towering 16 year old of bottomless appetite, would actually start eating less after tours like this.

The great thing about this fact is that as the guide told us the fact, she mimicked the action with an empty bucket and through the open door. Oddly, there was a witty reply from the street. Did they just employ someone to sit their and reply every 20 minutes or so?

Now near the end of tour, we somehow wormed  our way back so that we were facing the same street, different house further down. And suddenly we hear 'Gardee LOO!' and our tour guide replies with the same witty retort. While yes, it outlined the fact we were on a repeatable and repeated tour that had gone on hundreds if not thousands of times before, it was still a hell of a neat trick.

Throughout the tour they had various rooms, one was for stables, another featured highly detailed mannequins suffering under the Bubonic plague, and another had a eerie ghost story about a child ghosts and toys left behind. All in all, sans the lack of pictures it was a vibrant and fascinating look at that time period.

We ended that tour, declined the overpriced set picture, and went for a walk around St. Giles Cathedral. Which was beautiful, with stained glass and plaques to famous writers and thinkers and the odd historical diorama featuring bloody rebellion and betrayals over key ecclesiastical points in how a religion about Loving Your Fellow Man should really ought to be taught and anyone who disagrees better be prepared to die.

Then it's a search to find some haggis .We eventually stop at a pub. Which to us, looks like a real locals pub. Not 10 minutes after sitting we hear the bartender murmuring the bar is really 'just packed with only tourists'. They do not have the haggis but have some very respectable meat pies under heat lamps which we eat.

Then it's back to our place. A well earned rest from all the walking and hiking even if it wasn't, strictly speaking, actually up a mountain.