Day Seven: Parking a Car in Edinburgh

After a brief pit stop for present shopping (in which I stared at 47 different plaids for longer than anyone would find necessary trying to pick the perfect scarf for my mother) we regretfully left Pitlochry to make our way to Edinburgh.

When E originally started planning this trip, I did read somewhere that the Festival, which takes place for all of August in Edinburgh, would make things a little zoo-y. However, once we were able to easily find reasonably priced hotel rooms, I figured that was the end of our worries. I was, as usual, wrong.

The drive to Edinburgh was fairly easy and straightforward. The one thing we hadn't anticipated was finding parking. In Glasgow, it had been stupid easy - there was an (expensive) parking garage right across the street from our hotel, with plentiful spaces for a tiny Peugeot. This was not the case in Edinburgh. And the situation was aggravated by both the narrow windy streets and the amount of roads closed for the Festival. We finally ended up calling my dad, in the US, to ask him to google parking garages in Edinburgh. It didn't work, but we did eventually find one, and traipse with our luggage to the hotel.

Our hotel was quite centrally located, right on Princes Street. The rest of it was adequate. Honestly, I was a little disappointed after Pitlochry, but we didn't come to Edinburgh to sit in a hotel room. After a brief respite and ingestion of cold medicine (it was my turn to be sick), we decided to shake off the vaguely PTSD like symptoms that persisted after our parking problems and go 'splorin.

Almost all the Edinburgh pictures are courtesy of E. I was in a bit of a cold fog most of the time, and not as handy with my camera is I should've been.

Walter Scott Statue across from our hotel - he's had a rough festival

Our first area of exploration was the Royal Mile. This was for a few reasons: one, it was there and many things were happening. Two, it contained a legendary whisky store, of which E had oft heard tales but was yet to experience in person. Three, it is pretty. I think those are enough reasons, no? We could've hung out more on Princes St, but H&Ms are plentiful in the US, so that didn't seem quite as much the priority.

I didn't know much about the Fringe Festival before coming to Edinburgh in the middle of it. I still don't know a great deal about it. But it reminded me of being in New York on St. Patrick's Day - shoulder to shoulder people, booths, performers... some of them interesting, some of them baffling, many of them rather annoying. Being a short person in a crowd is no good anywhere and this was no exception.

So.. many.. humans

This is not to say it wasn't interesting. There were street musicians, who ranged from talented to cringe worthy (there was one sad sort of girl with a silly hat and odd hair crooning pop songs into a microphone. She made me believe that, lack of any musical talent notwithstanding, I too could be a performer), there were people juggling things on fire, and there was a plethora of costumed youth handing out small flyers to advertise their shows. As annoying as the last category were, I had to admire them too. They were hustling all day, handing out flyers to disinterested and occasionally hostile tourists, and then performing every night, probably sometimes to an almost-empty room (we saw a comedian, who recounted how he had given his show at one point to an audience of one. It sounded terribly uncomfortable).

My favorite flyer-handing out person just apathetically held out his offering and said "Piece of paper?" I took it and almost but not quite considered actually attending his show. I was impressed enough that I didn't throw it out until we'd gone far enough away that he couldn't see.

We had quite a nice time poking around Old Town. E found a used music store, which I did not take any pictures of, but it was a small room full of meticulously organized records, CDs, tapes, posters, etc. The shop keeper even had a proper sort of younger John Cusack vibe. I found a secret sort of garden in a close (which is UK for "Alley") and was able to indulge my personal interest in close up pictures of otherwise unremarkable flowers.

We ended the day with a meal at the Whiski Inn, where they took the innovative step of suggesting whisky pairings with each meal. I honestly think this is awesome, and they were generally speaking right on point. I had chicken which was delicious and E had a proper haggis, which was fine (mashed potatoes - good. haggis - ok. mashed turnips - tool of Satan). The best part of the food, though was the whisky sauce that came with E's haggis. It was creamy and whisky-ish without being overpowering and I immediately had fantasies of some sort of chicken whisky sauce alfredo pasta. It made me wish I was one of those people who took excruciating close up pictures of their food. But, I'm not. Which is fine because it looked like an ivory colored sauce. You can all imagine that quite well.

It's hard to write about Edinburgh without discussing the castle, even though we didn't technically visit it that day. There's nothing quite like wandering about a city with a castle looming over everything, particularly during Tattoo, when the whole area becomes a showcase for piping bands from around the world every night. E and I stood in awe for about ten minutes, just looking at how cool the flaming torches looked. We've got a lot of rather nice cities over here, but definitely a dearth of castles.

My best attempt to capture the torches in a picture. Hartford needs more castle.