Periodically.org

 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 ge...

 It's time for Edinburgh Castle. That military installation that changed hands many times over during the turbulent history of Edinburgh.    It's raining, in Edinburgh. Shocking idea, I know. but this is in July, well into the summer months. Even coming from the Pacific North West, where rain is just normal weather and any deviation from "water falling from sky" is deemed a bit unusual. Even for me, rain, serious rain, serious "this rain will resupply the aquifiers and protect this region from drought for years to come" is not really thought to be reasonable in JULY.   But I digress. It's raining. We shuffling through the Aesthetic Debacle that is the temporary stadium, and are kind of shuffled towards the entrance. There is no real line. No indication of what is happening. We just eventually shuffle through a quadruple line of folks standing with scanners to check our tickets. A sign here or there or a helpful repeated public messag...

Time to hit Edinburgh straight on, the time honoured tradition of the free walking tour. Where you walk too far and learn so much about a place, only enough to realize there is even more to learn. You get the beginnings of knowledge that really only lead to more questions and next thing you know it's 2am and you are down a deep rabbit hole on Wikipedia learning about Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite uprising.  We head to the most touristy of the touristy spots. Edinburgh being a UNESCO heritage site, that makes it the most touristy of tourist spots, well, most of it, really. But the main area is the Royal mile. The ridge that leads from the Edinburgh Castle (time honoured military installation) down to the Holyrood house Palace (far more decorative, where royalty stays when it visits). And along that ridge is all manner of shops, mostly tourist traps, but some genuine shops. You can generally tell how authentic it is by how much more expensive it is. To buy anything from ...