We’re just back from a weekend in Edinburgh, and though we are all completely exhausted, we had a fabulous experience. All of the Colgate students arrived safely in the middle of the week last week (just ahead of the big storm and all the flight cancellations, fortunately), and spent the rest of the week going through St. Andrew’s international student orientation. They registered for classes at the end of the week and will begin their regular schedule on Monday. So we took the opportunity to use their first weekend in Scotland as a chance to take our first group trip.
We left on Saturday morning and took the train to Edinburgh. The ride is beautiful, and crosses the Firth of Forth (say that five times fast!) before arriving into the bustling Waverly Station in the middle of town. Our group stayed in the Edinburgh Central Youth Hostel, which was only a six or seven minute walk from the train station (but feels much longer when carrying heavy luggage and managing a seven year old who insists upon digging through it for a third piece of gum), and we went right there to drop off our stuff. As a Midwesterner, I don’t have too much experience with riding trains or staying in youth hostels, so I was a bit wide-eyed at the whole process, but it went quite smoothly (the hostel goofed our reservation and had us all mixed up in various dorms, but we managed to sort it out, with only a bit of rearranging of people and beds, etc…). We then turned the students loose for a few hours, with plans to meet up at the Edinburgh Castle mid-afternoon.
The four of us and six students headed to the Royal Mile, and planned to walk down the hill to begin with a tour of Holyrood Palace, which is the official residence of the monarchy in Scotland. The queen is in residence each summer for a week or two, but since she wasn’t in town, a good bit of the palace is open for tours. The tours are quite well-done, as each visitor picks up a small audio device at the entrance, which are available in various languages, and for various types of visitors. The four of us chose a “family guide” which contains the same kind of information (skipping some of the details about the murder of Mary Queen of Scots personal secretary in her bed chamber, thankfully) but focuses more on the ways in which some of the tapestries or trompe l’oeil were created. Emma was quite taken by the Palace, since she has been reading a few books on Scottish history and knows more about all the various Marys and James than any of us do, but John struggled a bit more with finding something of interest in one empty room after another. I hustled him between the tapestries and the paintings, looking for any war or sword imagery I could find. He was pretty impressed with the king’s bedchamber, though his favorite part of the tour was the courtyard just outside the Abbey, where he could run around in peace and pretend to recoil in horror every time he found another gargoyle.
After the tour, we walked up the Royal Mile, which is incredibly picturesque. I had read various descriptions of the walk in guidebooks and could point out the Cathedral and the Parliament building (Emma’s favorite because it’s incredibly modern). Along the way, we looked down each of the alleys, called closes, which illustrate how the city was built right on top of itself over the centuries, until it was so overcrowded with people that everyone pretty much moved out and build a new town a few blocks away. Now, the Royal Mile is in an area referred to as “Old Town” while “New Town” is to the side of the castle, though many of its buildings date to the early nineteenth century. As a result, Old Town does attract a bigger share of tourists, and in between some of the historic sites are plenty of shops selling rugby wear, cashmere, tartan and kid size Highlander getup. Though it’s winter and not officially the tourist season yet, there were also a few street artists and people advertising one of the various ghost tours that are offered in the closes. It was certainly bustling, and made for a fun afternoon walk (except for David, who had to walk up the hill with John on his back…).
We met the students for a tour of Edinburgh Castle at 3:30. The castle is built on volcanic rock, and has been the site of various military attacks over the years, as well as a royal residence. It dominated the skyline of the city, and is its most distinctive feature (and it’s the most visited site in Scotland). It’s really more of a fortress, than a castle, and a few of the buildings in the complex date to the 12th century. The Scottish crown jewels (crown, sword and scepter) are kept there, which are also called the “honours” and were used in the coronation of kings and queens from Mary Queen of Scots to Charles II. The Stone of Destiny is there as well, and though it was interesting to see them (between the heads of the rows and rows of tourists in front of us, naturally…) I was a little disappointed that the display didn’t include more information about the Stone. Most of what I know about the stone comes from Emma’s school books (as does pretty much everything else I know about Scottish history at this point…), but the stories include
details about how the stone was taken by Edward I from Scotland to Westminster Abbey and used for coronations (sometimes incorrectly, according to some sources), how it was part of a terrorist attack in the 1920s and a theft by a group of Scottish students in the 1950s, and how it’s still considered by some to be a fake (with the real stone still safely hidden in Perth, just up the road from us.) In any case, our tour of the castle was well-done, though most of the students were freezing at this point in the afternoon and hopping up and down to keep warm. Emma and John had a great time in the castle (Emma loved the little cemetery just below St. Margaret’s chapel that was for the dogs of various military officers, and John never got past all the big cannons lining the fortress walls) but were also more than ready to go after the tour, so we left the castle and went into a café before dinner for hot chocolate and scones. This, of course, is the part of the trip about which they are still talking!
Our whole group had dinner out together, at a North African and French restaurant called La Maison Bleue that was just off the Royal Mile and near the castle. Previous study groups had gone there before and loved it, so we went with the known. The restaurant was in a beautifully restored building on Victoria Street, which is a steeply sloping cobblestone street, and our group took up most of the top floor. David and I had been in touch with the owner a few times, so he came up to meet us, and while he had put together a menu for the students which included starters like calamari, haggis tempura or mussels in white wine and ginger, and mains like steak au poivre, venison, and duck confit, he made some grilled camembert toast and pommes frites for the kids. He also put on a big show of shaking John’s hand and pretending that John’s grip had done some serious damage, which John found mildly amusing (though after he left, John whispered, “There, I shook his hand, NOW can we go back to the dorm?”). The meal was fantastic (though, really, what meal served among medieval walls in candlelight by a charming Frenchman isn’t?) and Emma was flattered that one of the students was asking her all kinds of questions about how she was finding school. By the end of the meal, though, both kids looked completely deflated, so we walked back through Old Town and down the hill again to the hostel for an early bedtime…or at least early by Edinburgh standards!
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