UK Trip: Edinburgh, Day One

The last stop on our whirlwind tour of the UK was Edinburgh, Scotland. We woke up early at our airport hotel in Cardiff to catch our morning to flight to Scotland, another turboprop plane. (It was in the Cardiff airport where we realized that, in the UK at least, they don't announce the gate for your departing flight until 20 minutes in advance. We think this is because they want to keep people in the main concourse with the duty-free shops where they can blow more money, rather than sitting quietly at the gate to wait for their flight!) Once in Edinburgh, we took the very convenient bus from the airport to central Edinburgh for a half-hour ride.

The Old Town of Edinburgh.

We got off at the train station in order to visit the tourist office for our free map and advice on what to do and see in our two days in the city. We then walked to our hotel, the Frederick House, to drop off our bags (since our room wasn't ready yet). Just walking to the hotel, we both quickly decided that Edinburgh felt like a fantastic city. It's very different from almost anywhere else I've been. The Old Town (the medieval and early modern city) is situated along and south of a ridge between Edinburgh Castle and Arthur's Seat (all that's left of an ancient volcano). On the north side of the ridge is the train station and the New Town, built in the 18th century on a nice grid pattern and full of neoclassical business buildings. Our hotel was in New Town and it was amazing to see how many people were out on the streets, shopping, going to work, etc. The city had a very energetic feel to it and the landscape was also very beautiful.

Lunch in a church basement.

For lunch, we chose something called the Undercroft Cafe, located in the basement of the parish church of St. Andrew and St. George in New Town.It was quite an experience! Basically, it was a dressed-up fellowship hall with food coming out of the small church kitchen and the clientele was mostly elderly Scottish women and a few middle-aged businessmen who must have worked in the area. The food was about what you'd expect from a church basement kitchen - good, but not great. Also, it was Shrove Tuesday (the day before Ash Wednesday) and the tradition in the British Isles is to eat pancakes on this day. So after we finished lunch, I went back to the counter to order a pancake for dessert (it was more like a crepe than a pancake).

It was while waiting in line for the pancake that I had an experience that confirmed for me that Edinburgh is a great city. Behind me, a middle-aged Scottish man asked the guy behind the counter about the soup on offer that day, something called "crofters' broth." Here's what happened:

Worker: Well, it's a broth....
Man in Line (laughing, to me): Well, I guess I asked for that one, didn't I? (While we both laugh, he points to the sign reading "crofters' broth) It says "crofters'" - it looks like there's more than one crofter in the broth, doesn't it? (Again, we both laugh.) I'm a pompous ass, I'm sorry! (To the worker.) What's in the quiche today?
Worker: Cheese and onions.
Man in Line and me, almost simultaneously, while laughing: No crofters in that!

Eating a homemade pancake on Shrove Tuesday.

After I'd finished my pancake, on the way out, the man came up to me again and said, "The broth was pretty thick, so there must have been a lot of crofters in it!" Then, in honor of it being Shrove Tuesday, he offered me one of the small homemade pancakes that his wife had made that morning and which he had in a little plastic baggie. It was very kind of him and the pancake was pretty good, much closer to American pancakes than a crepe.

The National Gallery of Scotland with Edinburgh Castle in the background.

Following lunch, we walked to the Scottish National Gallery, situated near the train station, and spent most of the afternoon there enjoying their very extensive art collection. We next decided to climb up the hill to Edinburgh Castle. It was quite a climb, but at the top, there were some fantastic views over the city of Edinburgh and the hills beyond. At the ticket office to the castle, they told us they would be closing in about an hour and that we really needed two hours to see the castle, so we bought tickets for the next day.

Lisa on the Esplanade of Edinburgh Castle.

The birthplace of Harry Potter.

 We then walked from the Castle down the Royal Mile (the street running along the top of the ridge from Edinburgh Castle to Holyroodhouse, the Queen's residence in Scotland) and into Old Town. We passed the Elephant House, where J.K. Rowling first started to write the Harry Potter books, and we ended up at the National Museum of Scotland. It seems very much like the Scottish version of the Smithsonian so there were plenty of generic exhibits on evolution, the history of technology, basic forces of physics, etc - in other words, exhibits we could see at plenty of museums in the US. We were interested in the parts dealing with the history of Scotland and, while the museum closed about 45 minutes after we got there and we had to leave, we were able to see some Viking remains and some artifacts from the 15th and 16th centuries. Plus, we saw Dolly the Sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell.

Dolly the Sheep.

Since she was born in Scotland, on her death, she was stuffed and put in the museum.

The Lewis Chessmen, National Museum of Scotland.

The Frederick House Hotel.

After that, we walked back to the hotel stopping in a Charles Tyrwhitt store on the way, a company I'vebought many shirts from on-line. The store was a bit disappointing, though; they didn't have any of the patterns I wanted to try on. The hotel was one of the nicer places we stayed on this trip. It's a four-star hotel in an old building, but we got a great deal on it on-line. The room was big (for some reason we were in a triple room with an extra bed), we got an actual closet for our clothes, and lots of free tea (we took it all with us when we left).
 

Oatcakes.

We then headed out for dinner and found a great place, Henderson's Bistro, that was entirely vegetarian and organic and mostly local. I had an onion and pepper quiche with a chutney sauce and salad, plus an organic Scottish beer that was quite good. We also ordered oatcakes (a traditional Scottish food, of course) but the kicker was they had a vegetarian haggis which Lisa, of course, tried. It was lentils, beans, oatmeal, mushrooms, carrot, onion, and garlic, served with the traditional clapshot sauce (I honestly don't know what this is!) and red wine gravy.

Vegetarian haggis.

(You can find the recipe for this delicious treat on the Henderson's website.) Speaking of vegetarian haggis, we were both surprised at how vegetarian-friendly the UK is, especially compared to France. We had no difficulty finding vegetarian dishes for Lisa and they were usually pretty good. Anyway, for dessert, we split a very yummy cherry pie with an oat crust. Henderson's was an extremely tasty restaurant and if you're ever in Edinburgh, we highly recommend a visit.

Scottish 5-pound note.

When we paid for dinner, we got a Scottish 5-pound note in change, which said "Clydesdale Bank" on it and had a picture of Alexander Fleming (the discoverer of penicillin), not the Queen on it (as the English pound notes do). Upon asking, we learned that Scotland retains the right to print its own money independently of the central bank of England (although Scottish notes can be refused in England at the discretion of the merchant). Along these same lines, I should note that the couple days we were in Edinburgh came right after David Cameron had met with the prime minister of Scotland, who is demanding a referendum on full Scottish independence. So many of the newspaper headlines were about various promises and threats made to the Scottish pm to get him to not go through with his intention to hold the referendum.

This first day in Scotland was amazing. Edinburgh is beautiful, the weather was good, and the people were very friendly and nice. Our second day, though, was even better and confirmed that Edinburgh is my second favorite non-US city (after Rome, of course).