Edinburgh Weekend

We left St. Andrews in our car, and met up with our students at the nearby rail station. They all made it there in time, which is always a worry for me, and we had plenty of time before our train to Edinburgh arrived. Unfortunately, as the train pulled up, I led the group to the wrong car so we weren’t able to make it to the seats that I had chosen, and in fact we didn't have any seats at all and spent the hour long ride squished against other passengers. I was carrying Leah, and so an older chap gave up his seat to me, though only after she started to swing her booted feet wildly and complain about not sitting down. Once we were sitting I could still barely move, and when she decided she wanted to draw on the Kindle Fire in my backpack, I did panic a bit. I managed to distract her by pointing out enough diggers along the tracks, and then boats in the harbor as we got closer, to keep her occupied.

We arrived in Edinburgh, tumbled out of the train, and regrouped. Emma and I met up with John and David, who were furious at each other for some miscommunication that occurred mid train ride about where they should actually get off, and they were both mad at me for botching the boarding process. I put them in charge of all future train rides from then on, which I though was an excellent tactic but had the unfortunate side effect of causing John to be anxious about our return trip, and to spend the whole weekend talking about how we were going to get on that return train correctly.

We walked to the hotel, which turned out to be a great, trendy little place with dorm style rooms, some of which included in-room ping pong tables, PlayStation and TVs at the foot of the bunk beds. Unfortunately, it was on a really downmarket street called Cowgate, known for its gloominess since it’s well below most of the other streets of Old Town Edinburgh. It’s also known for being a street of rowdy pubs and rowdy pubgoers. In fact, one actually passes through the beer-soaked patio of a huge pub to get to the lobby of our hotel. I picked the hotel because I thought the students would love it...and they did. I hadn’t considered, however, what it would be like to carry an overly tired toddler through a loud beer garden after sunset, past boisterous groups of twentysomethings out on the town for a night. The first night, after we arrived and had a quick dinner at a Nando’s, David took the students to a theater performance. Emma and John wanted to go as well, so I walked with the group to the theater, then left as they found their seats. I walked towards the hotel, and it was pretty quickly evident that I was the only person on the streets who 1) was over 40; 2) was accompanied by someone under 5; and 3) hadn’t been drinking for the last several hours. The nearer I got to the hotel, the worse it became, and of course the harder it was getting to carry Leah. I hadn’t brought a stroller because the wheels would have been no match for the cobblestones, the stairs or the hills in Old Town Edinburgh, but after a 20 minute walk holding almost 30 pounds on my hip, I was getting tired. We entered the Grassmarket area, which is a bit more pedestrian friendly than the area in which we had just passed, and so I put her down and let her walk next to me. Grassmarket is known for its restaurants and pubs, and also for its history as a horse and cattle market, and as a place for public executions by hanging. Here, Leah caught a second wind, and started to jump up on the low stone memorials that list the over 100 Scottish Covenanters that were hanged here in the 1600s. I was a little hesitant to let her do this, but since she was quite content and I wasn’t carrying her any longer, I hated even more to prevent her from doing so. Also, I couldn’t imagine her understanding what I meant if I said, “Sweetie, maybe we shouldn’t jump on a memorial to people who were hanged here, hmmm?”

On Saturday, we had a quick breakfast at a cute little tearoom on the Royal Mile, which is Edinburgh’s high street, called the Deacon’s House. This is in reference to Deacon Brodie, a Jekyll-and-Hyde type well known in Edinburgh history. Inside were murals that told the story of Brodie, but we couldn’t look too closely at these since other customers were sitting in front of each one, digging into a full Scottish breakfast. We were on a schedule, so we just had crepes and porridge and coffee, and headed out quickly to meet our students at Edinburgh Castle. I had intended to set the students up on a tour of the castle, but as we arrived it started to snow sideways, and got pretty miserable. Instead we ushered them to the top of the castle, where there are a few inside exhibits on the Honours of Scotland (Scotland’s crown jewels). We saw a few of the rooms that had been occupied by Mary Queen of Scots, toured some of the prison vaults, and caught part of a demonstration on the use of armour and weapons. This kind of thing always proves interesting because one realizes how incredibly heavy these suits and swords are. I’m not sure I would be able to take more than a few steps forward when wearing one of these…let alone engage in battle in one!

After an hour, we had exhausted all of our indoor options, so we moved to the on-site café for an early lunch. Most of our students were there as well (as were most of the other castle visitors) so regrouping for an afternoon tour of Old and New Town wasn’t an issue. Our afternoon tour guide was an older chap with a number of very interesting stories to tell about the city and the people who lived there, and though I was thoroughly enjoying the tour, I had to leave part-way through. It was seriously bitter and windy at this point, and I felt guilty at making Leah suffer through it since she really couldn’t get anything out of an outrageous story about the time naughty King George IV visited Scotland (a story I later learned was untrue, and this I know because I googled it…). So, I returned to the hotel, and took John with me to fight off any tuffs I encountered in the pub lobby.

David called me in the late afternoon after his students had finished touring the National Portrait Gallery, and we decided to meet back up at a café that was mid-way between the hotel and the museum. It was on a quiet side street and was nearly empty, which was odd because the coffee and scones we ordered were both delicious. We all sat in a circle of comfy chairs, and Leah busied herself with a basket of kids’ books nearby, while Emma recounted the rest of the tour for me. It was dark and blustery outside, and none of us wanted to leave, but the group had a scheduled tour of some of the underground “closes” of Edinburgh so we had to leave our cozy spot. When we were planning the trip, we wanted to give the students an idea of how the narrow closes of Edinburgh were constructed over the years, but it’s difficult to access some of them without being a part of an organized tour. Most of the tours are overly dramatic “ghost tours” that are intended not to be historically accurate, but to feature costumed “jumper-ooters” to scare the bejeezers out of their customers. I opted for a more sedate and established tour of the “Mary King Close” instead, though on the way we did end up waiting for a pedestrian light next to one of these “ghost tour” groups, and their guide, though made up in zombie face paint and dressed in an oily black cloak, seemed quite knowledgeable and reasonable. Of course, as we stood next to him, Leah kept eyeing his zombie face paint and then loudly whispered to me, “That is a sick man!”

Leah and I skipped the tour of the close because she didn’t meet the minimum age requirement, so we went back to the hotel and played with some Jenga blocks for about an hour. When the tour was over, I went to pick up Emma and John for dinner, and left David with the students for a group meal. It was a three-course menu prix-fixe at one of the lovely restaurants on elegant Victoria Street in Old Town, so I thought I would skip it and head to a more casual place with the kids instead. We ended up finding a great café that served venison pies, and homemade mac and cheese for the kids. Though it was past her bedtime, Leah spent most of the evening playing with the little bottles of Coleman’s mustard and HP brown sauce on the table, while Emma and John and I made a list of stupid things we overheard other tourists say in the Edinburgh Castle earlier in the day. I was dreading the walk home since we would have to march down Cowgate to get back, and we all talked about how strange this city is…chock full by day of mums with prams, but the moment the sun goes down they all disappear and the entire place turns into

a city-wide “stag do”.

The weather improved a bit on Sunday, but still wasn’t good enough for us to carry out our planned hike up Arthur’s Seat. Instead, we pushed back our start time and met up at the fabulous Museum of Scotland. We gave our students some free time to wander about in here, since the museum covers pretty much everything about the country from its land mass to its animals to its history to its recent vote for independence. We had lunch at a nearby Pizza Express with the group, and sang “Happy Birthday” to one of our students who was turning 21 (bummer to turn 21 in a country in which the drinking age is 18, right?). Two of the students did decide to climb Arthur’s Seat, but I couldn’t imagine hiking up that with a 2 year old in that kind of wind, so we went for another coffee at the Elephant House Coffee House. This is the café where JK Rowling was supposed to have written some of the Harry Potter series, and as such it is actually more of a tourist destination than a café now (so much so that the menu and signage appears in English and Chinese). Nonetheless, the students were happy to be there, and dutifully pulled out their laptops at the very table where she did some of her writing to finish up some of their work for David’s class later in the week. After we finished our coffee, we took one more stroll up the Royal Mile (poor Leah was so tired of trudging up hills at this point that she was puffing next to me, “So. Much. Tired”), picked up our luggage and headed for the train station.