Day Two of Edinburgh

So, where were we?

Ah, yes, in a very noisy hostel. Thankfully, the noise had nothing to do with the Colgate students...unless they speak Polish...

In any case, my memory of the trip picks up again at about 9:09 am on Sunday, when I finally made it downstairs to a cup of coffee. We had ordered a "full Scottish breakfast" for our group and went into the dining room in the hostel together, where we had our choice of eggs, Irish

sausage, Scottish bacon (which is twice as wide as American bacon, for some reason...), grilled tomatoes, and a few various fried products which neither David nor I could ever quite place. The kids stuck to their usual when we're eating out: white bread with several pats of foil-wrapped butter.

The first item on our agenda was the Museum of Scotland. David had arranged, through our pastor in Hamilton, for the group to meet a professor of art history at the University of Edinburgh for a lecture on Celtic art. We entered the museum as a group, but Emma and John and I quickly separated from them and I ushered the kids over to some of the Discovery Zone areas, where they could dress up as Vikings and princesses...assuming that would hold their attention more than Celtic art would. The museum was excellent: on the bottom floors, the exhibits began with the formation of the British Isles through glaciers, volcanoes, and land movement, then covered the Romans and the Picts. Upper floors covered the Stuart monarchs and the Reformers, the whole Bonnie Prince Charlie era, and the "Highland Clearances" (the forced displacement of the Scottish Highlanders to the sea coasts, the lowlands, and other continents like North America). At the top, there were exhibits on the industrial revolution and the tenements of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and several films about Scottish life at the turn of the century, and Scottish communities around the globe. It's a very well done museum, and does a good job of holding the attention of all kinds of audiences, especially kids (and it's full of them for that reason...and because it's free!) Emma was especially taken with the exhibits on the upper floors about life in the tenements, and wanted to stay at the museum long

after the three of us were ready to leave for lunch.

We finally managed to pry her away by promising to take her to see the Greyfriars Bobby statue, which is just across the street. The statue is of a Skye terrier who belonged to an Edinburgh policeman in the 19th century in Edinburgh. When the policeman died of tuberculosis, he was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard, and the dog apparently sat on his grave for the next 14 years. Rather than serving as an inspiration, though, the statue made both kids start to whine about our dog, who is back home in the States. So, we moved on quickly. Next, we stopped at the nearby Elephant House, which is one of the spots where J.K. Rowling said she wrote some of the early Harry Potter books, overlooking Edinburgh Castle. This fact has apparently made the Elephant House the second most visited site in Edinburgh, judging from the crowd, which made me skeptical that anyone could get anything written here (where would they sit, for one?). A few people were trying to gather inspiration from Rowling, and several were sitting at the window table where she had sat with blank notebooks spread out in front of them, while other people were snapping pictures around them of the castle through the window. One bespectacled pre-teen boy was just wandering around the whole time, his mouth agape, as if he were expecting Ron Weasley pop out from under a table at any moment.

We went against the advice of a few former Edinburgh visitors and had lunch at the cafe, but were pleasantly surprised that the food was pretty good after all. Of course, John was just relieved to have finally found a hot dog, and my panini was a combination of salty meat, melted cheese and a jammy mango concoction, so how can one find fault with that? Emma was displeased that her vegetarian chili contained so many vegetables, but her mood was reversed when we went to the bathroom and she discovered that a list was being formed on the back of the door of visitors who considered themselves part of "Dumbledore's Army." I wordlessly handed her a pen, and just as she added "Emma D." as the 243rd member of the Army, she turned to me said, "You know, I don't usually write on bathroom walls, Mommy..."

After lunch, we walked back up the Royal Mile, and stopped in at the Museum of Childhood, which has five floors devoted to toys from yesteryear. It was a well-done museum too (and also free!), and while Emma had a fabulous time reading through each and every display, the rest of us were nearing the end of our energy supply. David and John retreated to a corner window to play games on his Blackberry (yes, amidst a ROOM full of TOYS!) while Emma painstakingly matched up the dolls from around the world with their country of origin according to the various placards, then rating them on a scale of one to ten on their creepiness. At about four pm, David started to hint that one of the BBC channels might be carrying the Superbowl, so we walked back to the hostel to get our luggage, then to the train station, followed by two very unhappy kids who were desperately recounting the story of the previously promised, yet never delivered upon, post-lunch pastry. Eventually, we made our way back to St. Andrews on a train so packed full of people that that the four of us managed to share one and a half seats for the whole ride home. By the time we got "home" (exclaiming how strange it was to be so relieved to be back to a house that didn't belong to us...), our plans to stay up for the Superbowl had been dashed, and we all went to bed straightaway...an act that David considers so un-American that he’s afraid we’ll have our passports revoked. I assured him that after Christina Aguilera apparently messed up the National Anthem so badly, we’re probably safe!