...aka New Years’ Eve in Edinburgh!
So, where to begin with THIS adventure. Well, maybe at the very beginning, a very good place to start.
It
was awesome to see Rach, my great mate from uni all those years ago,
when I stepped off the train in Leeds. We later worked out it had been
five years since we’d last seen each other. And that’s way too long (so
we’ve vowed to make sure the next meeting is within that time frame).
Rach had driven from Norwich in north-west England, where she’s
currently studying her Masters in International Development and
Conflict. She had brought two other ladies with her – a Miss Audrey and a
Miss Katie, two Canadians, one of which who studies with Rach in
Norwich, and the other who works for a small NGO in genocide prevention.
And
so we zoomed off towards The North. That’s actually what it says on the
road signs. I figured it was some sort of indescribable region in an
upwards direction, so we headed there given that Scotland is north of
England (!). After a mammoth drive (merci beaucoup chauffer Rachael) we
finally arrived at the now very dark Scottish border for an official
picture of our first foray into the country.
Then the
challenge was on to find our apartment with all the one way streets.
Boo! In the end it wasn’t too hard, and we were delighted to find the
apartment located right on the Royal Mile, the main cobblestoned drag
through the town, which led directly up to Edinburgh Castle. Perfect! It
was on the fourth floor (and the narrow, lighthouse-style stone stairs
were a killer) above a great little pub called the World’s End, which
soon after we discovered was even better inside with friendly staff and a
rad menu. So our night finished after a few wines and an agreement that
we shouldn’t get too drunk on our first night, especially with New
Year’s coming up and a day of exploring the city to come.
The
next day we were out and about exploring Edinburgh. Given how early it
gets dark at this time of year, we decided to take on the challenge of
reaching Arthur’s Seat, atop a lofty perch overlooking the city. So up
we laboured, cameras in hand, stopping extremely often along the way –
not only because the light was beautiful and the views of the city were
stunning, but because we were already tired! We lost Audrey early on in
the piece and after Rach and I decided to make our way to the top we
also lost Katie. In the end I was the only one who made it right to the
top. But that was ok, it was getting time to cruise back down the
mountain and find our fellow comrades.
Some piccies at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=60796&id=543196685&l=5779fd1fb7
We
wandered back down the mountain and around the streets of this
beautiful city, admiring the ancient architecture and the way the castle
imposed itself at the opposite end of the city to Arthur’s Seat,
forebodingly observing the goings-on of the city below. When we
eventually made our way back to the Royal Mile we found our friends in a
state of already advanced inebriation in a pub across the road, and sat
down to polish off a bottle of wine with them. After we’d been kicked
out of the pub (not Australia’s fault, it was those rowdy Canadians) we
went back to the apartment to drop off Canada and proceeded to grab a
nice, relaxing quiet dinner for two before joining a ghost tour.
Edinburgh is said to have a gruesome history of burning witches,
torture, poverty and other dark secrets and we wanted to find out what
these were, as well as where the spirits left behind by these practices
were lurking. Unfortunately due to the time of year (and the offer of a
free drink at the end), the tour was packed and the company had two
concurrent tours going, which meant competition for time and space and a
long, annoying wait at the tour’s start for everyone to pay.
Eventually
the tour began, with a wander through the streets, a quick history
lesson and then into some old, dark and damp vaults which were
originally designed for the storage of bulk goods such as tobacco. When
this idea failed due to the influx of water through the limestone, the
vaults became the hiding place of the homeless, who were not legally
allowed to exist on Edinburgh’s streets, and white witches, who
practiced their religion in secret to avoid being burned at the stake.
The cramped conditions led to poor sanitation, high levels of disease
and therefore mortality, and it was the ghosts of the poor that were
said to inhabit these vaults. We didn’t see any. Nor was the tour scary
in any way – even after the claims that it has featured on numerous TV
shows as the most able to prove the existence of ghosts, and the lame
and futile attempts of one of the guides to jump out and scare us at the
end.
After being quite disappointed with the ghost
tour and the shady location of our ‘free drink’, we headed out of the
bar on the lookout for something a bit more welcoming. We found quite a
dearth of appropriate places, so after stepping into and almost
immediately out of a quite shady establishment we resigned ourselves to
going back to the apartment, even though we were both clearly up for
something a bit more fun.
While walking back down the
Royal Mile, we passed a little pub of the same name. Fortuitously
someone ahead of us just happened to step inside, and the very rad live
music filtering out of the place, for just a moment, was enough to get
us straight in there. Great minds think alike. After a while I had
acquainted myself with a nice Italian boy and Rach had literally grabbed
the arm of a New Zealander posing as a Scotsman – asking him ‘where to
next?’ under the impression he was a tour guide – and we had our
chaperones for the night.
Roberto had lost his mates a
few hours earlier and Pete was up for some more adventures after the pub
closed, so the four of us headed out into the cold in search of
Grassmarket – a street downtown which was home to more drinking
establishments. By the time we got there it was around 2am and the only
place we could find was a very Woolshed-like (ugh!) pub-slash-club, but
it did the job until it closed an hour later. Just enough time to grab a
couple more drinks, talk a bit more shit and have a bit of a dance
before heading home. Day one of drinking over.
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