Friday, Feb. 4---
--- The big trip to Scotland begins today, and we round everyone up and rendesvous at the train station for a five hour trek into the heartland of the Highlands. The trip is rather uneventful -- just a bunch of us playing cards, sleeping, playing more cards, and then passing the time idly reading our books. Once we get there, though, and step out of the train station, BAM! We’re smacked in the face with an unbelievable view. The city sprawls out before your eyes, carefully perched on a series of elevated hills. At one end is the giant castle, at the other are a pair of large, lush, green hills, almost mountainesque in stature, and in the middle are a slew of churches, restaurants, and businesses, all looming down upon you and inviting you with their windowed gazes.
By the time we get into town, it’s around 5, and sadly, the this is the time the entire town shuts down, so we just walk around for a spot and then, backs aching, decide to check into a hostel to ditch our bags before the evening begins. We opt to hang our shingles in the Castle Rock Hostel, which, luckily for us, lies right in the shadow of the monstrous castle. The girls check in and are placed in the Sesame Street room, while I, the sole male, am placed in the Happy Days room, bed Richie after the notorious do-gooder Mr. Richie Cunningham. (Sounds like an appropriate placement for me, but wait a little while before you pass that judgement...)
Once done, we head out and walk around a bit more to familiarize ourselves with the city. We traipse by churches, wander through some cemetaries, and eventually get a little hungry, so we stop for grub in the invitingly named Biddy Mulligans. I order a pint of McEwans, apparently the local Edinburghian brew, and a meal of Cumberland Sausage and Mash. This, as it turns out, tastes a lot better than it looks.
It comes on a great big plate containing a bottom layer of endless mashed potatoes, and one single sausage, curled into a giant U, perched atop them (it looks like a giant U-shaped piece of shit on a pillow). The sausage is nothing remarkable, but the potats are rather nice, indeed. There are mustard seeds peppered throughout them and this gives off quite a unique and flavorful taste. I devour this and then ask a question that will give me a mission for the entire weekend; one I will dread a little later in the night (and especially the next two mornings), but one I ask nonetheless.
I inquire with the waittress where I can pick up one of the pub tours that I have seen signs for around the city. She doesn’t know quite what I am talking about, but she does know a little bit about the Eerie Ale Trail, a circuit of 11 local bars where, if you partake in a pint from each, you will receive a free commemorative T-Shirt. Having nothing much to do until later in the night, I decide that it sounds like a fun challenge. I sign us up, grab our marking sheets / maps, and make sure we get stamped for the pints we consumed at Biddy’s, and then head out the door, my immediate goal in life to consume a mere 10 more pints of beer over the course of the next two nights. Piece of cake for a seasoned liver lambaster like me...
The next stop is Maggie Dickson’s, which happens to be right next door to Biddy’s. This is a rather coolly decorated place, filled with all sorts of gothic decor -- skeletons hanging from the ceiling, pictures of movie monsters and mutants on the walls -- that create a rather interesting mood. I guzzle another pint of McEwan’s, get stamped, and then head out again.
The third pub on our tour is the Malt Shovel, a place that is incredibly difficult to find. We wander around for around 45 minutes looking for the place, and we finally stumble upon it, by pure luck rather than map reading prowess (and I think to myself, “If we’re having this much trouble finding places when we’re 95% sober, what the hell is gonna happen when we’re further along down the line?”) Realizing thoughts like this are fruitless and wasteful, I drown it out of my head while quaffing my third pint of the hearty home brew, McEwan’s. We get stamped, stagger out the door, and head for Stinky Pete’s, a rather dark and dismal looking place we passed on the way to the Shovel.
Turns out the reason it looks so dark and dismal is because it’s not open. Panicking -- “Crap! Now what the hell am I going to do? I need that freaking T-shirt! I need it like a castle needs a moat; like a cow needs its cud; like a college student needs gallons of beer.” Deciding that these thoughts were as fruitless as my previous ones and were costing me valuable drinking time, I head down the street to Option B, otherwise known as the Living Room.
This place is absolutely dead. There are a handful of people in here other than us, but that’s good because we get some rather nice seats undisturbed at the back. I guzzle Number 4, make use of the facilities for the first time (and on only my fourth beer. I’m slipping in my old age...) and then head back out again. This time we walk to Pete’s again and I start knocking on the door. “Let me in! I need to drink beer here! I need new clothes and this is the only way to get them! Let me in! Let me in!”
I keep this up for three or four minutes and am about to give up when the door opens and a befuddled waittress stares back at me. I casually inquire, “Uh, are you guys open?” To which she replies, “We are now, I guess.” Score! The prospects of winning the Alcoholic’s Cup still remain! Now as bad as the Living Room was for providing other patrons, this place is ten times worse. This place shows fewer signs of life than a fat man sitting in the recliner on the weekend. We are the only people in this place, but that doesn’t bother me -- I pick the plum-est spot in the joint, appropriately a mock throne at the head of the hall, and plop down to imbibe Number 5.
As this pint goes down, I realize two things: one, you should always be sure to allow for some digestion time in between eating and drinking, something I neglected to do, and as a result I’m getting increasingly full. It’s getting harder to cram these beers down my throat than it is to stick a sumo in a Yugo. And two, I’m getting drunk, again.
These two titanic understandings reached, I gather the troops and head off to a bar not on our Ale Trail (we need a break from all the official drinking we’re doing, so we’re going to an un-sanctioned beer bordello to relax), Finnegan’s Wake. Yes, careful readers will spot that this is a bar we have frequented back in London, and yes, it is the same bar. Same signs, same decorations, same owners. One difference (other than location) -- this one has live music on the weekends. The band playing tonight is an authentic Irish band and play some absolutely raucous numbers. The best thing is (other than adding an unofficial pint to my tally sheet) that a large portion of people are doing the Irish jig along to the music, carelessly jumping and kicking to and fro.
Now those of you who don’t go drinking with me might not realize this, but doing the jig is one of my time-honored trademarks when the night is late, the planets and stars are aligned, and Tim’s blood alcohol content is high. It’s one of my favorite things to do for a laugh, except now we had a whole room of people doing it! We have an absolutely fabulous time, jigging, do-see-do-ing, spinning, etc. and by the time the band is done playing, I have worked up quite a lather (I seriously can’t remember being any hotter than I was this night. My clothes were pasted to me.)
Realizing it’s late (but not too late) I decide to stop off at one more pub for one last pint. The problem is, everyone else has decided to wuss out on me. One of them has lost their card with their stamps on it and the last time they remember having it was at the Malt Shovel (and good luck finding that place again) and the others are tired, so after less than half of the official trail, I have already lost every one of my compatriots. Weiners.
The final destination is a place called The Fire Station, and I quickly order and polish off Number 7, but decide to hang around a little longer once they start playing some great songs (Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstitious’ makes an appearance, as does the Chicken Dance) and I recognize some of the people I have just been jigging with, so we hoist our pints and bust out in spontaneous jigs, singing at the top of our lungs. (Try doing the jig to “Bust A Move” and you’ll realize what a fun, drunken state we were in.) In short, we have a great time, and I return to Richie more than a little soused, but more than halfway home to my prized T-shirt. I fall asleep (pass out) with visions of 100% cotton blends and white crew necks dancing in my head, tainting the fair Mr. Cunningham with my sinful sweat and saliva...
Saturday, Feb 5 ---
---We arise bright and early and head off for a nice invigorating hike up the two mountainous hills on the edge of town. The closer we get to them, the more awesome the task before us as the figures loom high in the sky. We choose a path and start walking, weaving around tributaries of a canal and large rock formations, plowing right in between the two hulking masses and slowly disappearing into this sea of green.
We slowly wind our ways up the side of the smaller one, Salisbury Crag, and eventually get to the top a half hour later. The view from here is amazing, but seeing the other mount towering over us, I hold off snapping any pictures until I get to the truly cherry spot. We soak in the view and our mini-triumph while catching our breaths, and then head off again to conquer the large one, the looming Arthur’s Seat.
This one takes us quite longer to get up. We slowly twist our way up its sides in an ever-tightening spiral, and finally we are high enough to start plunging straight up the face. It’s a rather steep incline, but after about 40 minutes of climbing, I reach the top, my followers a good 5 minutes behind. The view from here is every bit as spectacular as I imagined, and I pat myself on the back for delaying photographic gratification until now. You can see for miles all around you -- you can see the sea on one side, the castle far down on the other, and a veritable forest of buildings growing in between. The view is accompanied by an unbelievably stiff wind coming off the water -- very strong, very cold -- and you have to struggle to remain standing on the cliff’s highest spot. It’s a rush, as is the view, as is the realization that the ant-like buildings and equally minute people are far, far below -- I have climbed to the highest point in the city, and one of the highest points in the whole country. Unbelievable.
On the way down, we stop to admire some swans that are swimming in a pond on Arthur’s opposite side, and eventually make our way back into town. After a quick bite to eat (I eat panini again, but it just isn’t as good as in Brugge. That woman made a mean sandwich...) we set off to learn a little bit more about the city.
The city itself, for example, was just a small town constantly under attack by England for the first 700 years of its existence. At the end of the 15th century, the city became the capital of Scotland and began to grow, both in population and in physical size. It was sacked in 1544 and many subsequent fires wracked the city (just like London, this place burned more than a witch in early-Massachusetts), so that is why there are so few old buildings here (and by old I mean over 300 years old -- the few that remain have what are called doocats in them (or dovecotes), which are circular holes above the uppermost windows of the house. These holes housed the nests of pigeons and doves and, when there was a scarcity of meat, these could be eaten by the Scots).
Along the way we also learn of three interesting characters in the history of the town. First, we learn of the interesting life of Deacon Brodie who now has a pub named in his remembrance. Brodie was a respected cabinet maker of the time, a Deacon of Wrights and an important member of town council by day, and by night he was a notorious gamble with a passion for cockfighting. He had two mistresses and five illegitimate children to provide for, so he took to a life of crime, burglarizing the buildings of the town that he had access to as a result of his position. Eventually suspicions were raised, and the good Deacon took to the highlands and fled to Amsterdam (see? All the scum of the Earth go to Amsterdam because they know singling out someone who’s not a dirty, rotten criminal here would be as difficult as finding someone who’s an honest, hardworking politician in D.C....), but he was eventually brought back to Edinburgh and tried for his crimes, being found guilty and hung in front of St. Giles church on Oct. 1, 1788.
The second interesting soul we learn of is Greyfriars Bobby. This is actually a dog, a tiny Skye Terrier who loved his master more than life itself. This cute little pup, now commemorated by a small statue outside the church he stood vigil over for so many years, once belonged to the Constable John Gray of the Edinburgh Police. In 1858, after a very short illness, Gray passed away and was buried in the Greyfriars Churchyard. The bond between the two was so strong that Bobby stood guard over his master’s grave for the next 14 years, scarcely leaving his side, and being fed by the peope who lived nearby.
The final person to add flavor to this town’s history is Maggie Dickson, the same lass who the bar I mentioned earlier is named after. Maggie, also known as “Half-Hangit Maggie,” earned her nickname thusly: a salt wife from Musselburgh, Maggie was sentenced to death for the murder of her illigitimate child. She was hung in the Grassmarket area of town, her body then being removed on an open cart as was natural for the times. On the way back to Musselburgh, though, the driver stopped for a nip of ale at a pub, and, the bumpy ride having sufficiently disturbed the cart’s “deceased” victim, Maggie rose from the back and walked the rest of the way back to town. The sight of her caused quite an uproar, but as the sentence actually had been carried out, she was declared free and thus earned her nickname of “Half-Hangit Maggie.” Talk about your good strokes of luck (if you call being hung and riding around in a cart full of dead people lucky...)
After this short walk around town, we head up to the other side of town and the huge eponymously titled castle, the Edinburgh Castle. The castle that we see today, built on top of an extinct volcano, is not the original one that was built. That one was demolished, save for the chapel of St Margaret, by Thomas Ranulph, the Earl of Moray, in 1313. The castle was rebuilt in 1368 and has, over the years, been used for similar things as the Tower of London in England. Scores of people were imprisoned and tortured here (in the dark, dank dungeons that you can still walk through), mainly those of the Napoleonic and other French wars. This wasn’t always a bad place to be, though, because the Scottish citizens often helped them out of pity, contributing to a relief fund for the detained and buying the snuff boxes and small toys the prisoners made (sounds like a Federal prison in the States, eh?)
The castle also has a pet cemetery for the dogs of the soldiers stationed there, containing roughly two dozen ex-patriate pooches, and the colossal Mons Meg, the giant cannon. This monstrosity was built in 1449 by the Duke of Burgundy, but he didn’t use it and ended up giving it to King James II, his nephew-in-law. James apparently adored cannons, and this being the mother of all cannons, he fell in love. Strangely enough, though, he never got a chance to fire her -- he died while standing too close to another cannon when it fired. The first time this was fired in 1473 (to coronate the birth of King James V) reports of hearing the boom came from miles and miles away.
The neatest thing on show here at the castle are the Scottish Crown Jewels, otherwise known as the Honours. They’re very similar to the Crown Jewels of England -- crown, scepter, sword, etc. -- but the story that goes along with them is much more interesting. There never used to be a United Kingdom, so Scotland and England were constantly at war. When Oliver Cromwell seized power in England, he proceeded to invade Scotland and attack the heart of the city, the castle. People heard he was coming, so two servants were charged with the task of smuggling the Honours out of the castle and into the countryside where they could be hidden safely. They broke the sword in half, along with the scepter (and you can still see where they fused them back together years later), and these women smuggled the Jewels out of the castle hidden in bunches of flax they were carrying (they even got stopped by some English soldiers who had taken over another part of the city, but left unscathed...). They buried them and eventually Cromwell was usurped and the Jewels were unearthed and reformed.
Until, that is, Scotland decided to join the United Kingdom. Having two sets of Crown Jewels was seen as ‘actions contrary to the idea of a harmonious union,’ so they were boxed up in this giant wooden chest (still on display today) for 111 years, virtually passing from memory. Someone did remember them, though, and they were unearthed again and put on display in the 1800s, only to be buried one last time during WWII. Pretty neat, eh?
After all this learning I take a quick moment to decompress, casually walking through a kilt weaving factory, and then I resume my pub crawl. If you’ll recall, I knocked off seven pubs last night, one that didn’t even count for my T-shirt. First up on the docket tonight is Fibber Magees, a tiny place named after a notorious liar (and NO, it’s not my sister. Why can’t you people just leave her alone?) Pint of McEwan, meet the inside of my stomach.
After that batch of introductions I head off quickly to the Queens Arms, which, surprisingly, is another pub (Hi, Tim. Fancy meeting you here...) This one tells the story of the demise of Queen Somebody, but the rapidly infused pint at Magees and its twin brother here at the Arms make the story unmemorable and ergo unrelayable. Oh well. Somebody ruled, somebody gets mad, somebody gets beheaded. It’s a story as old as time... One more McEwan’s down the hatch, thus completing parts eight and nine of my epic alcoholic saga and I’m off again to another pub (did I mention that everyone else has wussed out on me by this point? After last night no one was willing to try to finish, but I was like “I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend this much money on beer and not get a nice damned T-shirt. I’ve already sank too much into this venture. I’m going.” And so I did. By myself. What’s that? It’s pathetic and sad to drink by myself? It shows blatant signs of self-destructive behavior and crass diseregard for my well-being? Fuck you. A lot of other people who drink solo only get increasingly cirrhotic livers and do so because they’re depressed. I’m happier than a hillbilly on smack and I’m getting a frigging shirt out of the ordeal, so eat me...)
The next stop on the ale trail is Jekyll and Hyde’s to meet some wieners, otherwise known as my travel partners, for dinner. This bar is owned by the same people as Maggie Dickson’s, so it’s filled with similar Gothic decor -- it’s dark, smoky, and completely cool. I eat fish and chips (a good, but not great rendition) and knock back another of my friends (this one was named Ten. Has a nice ring to it, huh?) Before leaving I check out the coolest part of the pub -- the bathrooms (and I’m being serious here. This place has great bathrooms. Picture a large bookshelf filled with books stretching across a wall of the pub. Now picture people walking into this wall of tomes and not getting hurt (that’s what I saw and I had to do a double take. Just how drunk am I?). That’s because there are two hidden doorways in there that lead down little corridors to the loos. So frigging cool it hurts...)
After saying goodbye to Eight, Nine, and parts of Ten, I also bid fare-dee-well to my pallies to finish my conquest. Next up is the rather forgettable Au Bar, after which I waddle towards Bentley’s with a gut that feels like it’s going to explode; it feels like I swallowed a Hogshead, when in actuality I’m just near to finishing drinking one... A good thing happens on my way to Bentley’s -- I have to walk. A lot. This bar is on the other side of the frigging universe, and I’m walking for a good twenty minutes. This uncalled for bout of exercising actually manages to burn a few calories and free a little space in the old food holder (recently converted to an all-liquid receptacle). When I finally get there, I exhaustedly slump onto a stool, order a pint, and begin chatting up the bartenders who are quite impressed that I am now only one pub away from officially completing my Ale Trail. And while I kill off several thousand more brain cells with my pint, I manage to use a few of the remaining ones to learn something. There are two different types of McEwan’s beer that are offered -- the bartenders were always asking me if I wanted lager, and I always said yes, but I never knew there was an alternative. I just figured it was a rhetorical question being asked to some apparently numbskulled tourist. The other type is McEwan’s 80 /-. This strange symbolism baffled me, but the bartenders simply explained it to be a representation of the old type of money, the shilling. So /- means shilling. So you see, I actually managed to cull something worthwhile out of my tour, and I haven’t even gotten the shirt yet...
Leaving Bentley’s, I head off to the last official pub on the crawl, the aptly named Bar Oz (both because of its Aussie decor (they call Australia Oz out here -- never heard that back home) and its symbolic meaning to me. This pub is my personal Oz -- my alcoholic Emerald City -- and I’m ready to see what’s behind the curtain...) I walk in, order my last pint of McEwan’s (nice try, liver. Think again. We’re not done yet...), get my card stamped, and then receive my shirt. And after spending over 20 pounds (roughly thirty greenbacks) on beer, what do I receive? A two dollar T-shirt. Seriously, this thing is unbelievably flimsy -- it’s so thin it makes an underfed Ethiopian look like Fat Albert. Ahh, but the memories...
Rapidly becoming exceedingly drunk, I leave Bar Oz with my high-priced trinket and head off to the hostel to see if anyone has returned. I find one lonely soul who decides they’d rather argue with me than hear of my triumph, so I decide to drown my sorrows in a pub, my antagonizer following quickly in tow. The rest of the night is a blur -- both because of the alcohol, but also because of my decision to turn my brain off so as to tune out the aggravation. By the end, though, I had stopped at two more pubs, numbers 14 and 15, called the Beehive and the place where I had my last lick of liquor, the aptly named the Last Drop. My epic struggle to become a hopeless lush completed, I stagger back up the hill and pass out in Richie Cunningham’s lap (I told you I was drunk...)
Sunday, February 6 ---
--- Wake up early today and take a walk around town snapping some more pictures. Have lunch in a great little sandwich shop that is amazingly cheap -- a huge sandwich, drink, and crisps for three measly pounds! That’s the best deal I’ve had since I’ve been here; I only wish they had places like this in London. Continue walking along Prince’s Street, admire the Scott monument, a memorial to all the fallen Scottish soldiers, then head to an ancient looking cemetery with hugh mausoleums. It’s pretty eerie in here even though it’s daylight -- it’s just so still that every crunch of the gravel under my feet sounds like an atomic explosion. Some cool stuff in here, though, including several tombs and tombstones dating back to the 1770s! (This just blew my mind because I realized that these people died before our country even existed. Wow.) I then head up to the Greek portion of town, which is really just the area surrounding the observatory (it’s so termed because there are a pair of ruins that look like something out of Athens. They were supposed to, too. It was going to be a monument that copied the Greek style -- large stone columns, arches, etc. -- but they never finished it, so it sits incomplete atop this large hill. Kinda neat.)
I eventually make my way back to the center of town to meet up with the group and depart this fair city. I absolutely adored this town -- it was beautiful, filled with great sights and citizens, and it pains me a little to leave it. This is definitely the tops in my tour of cities so far.
As we hop on the early train (the entire town is shut down on Sundays. None of the museums open until three or so. Kind of stupid.) we settle in for a quick ride home to London. It should only take four hours if everything goes well. And, of course, it doesn’t. First, we get a half hour out of town when some knucklehead pulls the emergency brake right after we had left one of the stations. The reason? Not heart attack, stroke, or projectile vomiting. Nope. They just missed their stop. So, after the engineers check the length of the entire train for the alarm that was pulled and the person with the emergency (which of course was in the very last car of the train), we pull away again after refusing to go back for the nimrod alarmists. An extra half hour added to our travels, we could still get back in London after making good time. A four and a half hour train ride isn’t that bad when you think about it. So we start chugging along again, our group playing some cards to pass the time (I’m eating these people up in Hearts. I must have fed the Black Bitch, otherwise known as the Queen of Spades, to my pallies half a dozen times. I did eat it twice, though. Too bad for them it was when I was shooting the moon...), when the train stops again.
This time we sit on the track for well over a half hour without the slightest peep from the engineer as to why. Finally he spits out the fact that one of the earlier trains is stuck on the tracks and unable to move. So, after sitting there for another ten minutes, a time during which I see the woman in the seat in front me reading a book (a picture book, no less) on diseased fetuses. And before I can look away, I get treated to pictures of diseased baby genitalia, malformed body parts, and the likes. After quickly vomiting into a paper satchel (and breathing in endless amounts of secondhand smoke -- did I forget to mention that we’re stuck in a smoking car? That’s right. These were the only seats left -- damnit! Everyone around me is looking like an industrial chimney and by the time I leave the train I look like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins after he was dancing on the rooftops...)
After all this excitement the train actually starts to move backwards. Its destination? The station we left about twenty minutes earlier. Oh joy. While we’re crawling backwards I feel like shouting, “Incredible journey! In case you missed it, folks, let’s take a look at it in instant replay...”) We finally get there, switch tracks, and continue on our journey. The rest of the trip is rather uneventful (after our impromptu trip back in time) and we arrive in London, our intended four hour journey completed, a whopping seven hours later (at least we made good time, right?) I stumble out of the car looking like a dirty lemon -- my skin is a tarnished, grimy yellow, as are my teeth, hair, etc. I feel absolutely nasty and as I take a breath, I begin to choke. My lungs are on fire! What is this mysterious substance making its way into my alveoli? Oh right. Fresh air. I forgot what it felt like... A quick Tube ride home and a short walk later, I crawl into bed after quite the weekend...