Speas and Eichhorn Do Edinburgh, Part Two

Concluding the tale of two Americans gallivanting about Edinburgh for the weekend.

Anyhoos.

So, at the end of last week's installment, I had collected Jacob from the airport, we had visited the Queen (well, sorta), and eaten our weight in delicious Chinese noodles. So great.

Anyhoos, the next day was spent wandering up and down the Royal Mile, including visits to Edinburgh Castle, St. Giles' Cathedral, and various touristy shops. But the main part of the day was spent hiking Arthur's Seat, the extinct volcano in the middle of Holyrood Park, right behind the residence halls where I live. I hadn't made the climb before, and since it's pretty  much something you have to do at some point while in Edinburgh, I figured it would be a great thing to include in Jacob's Edinburgh experience.

Arthur's Seat. Also, I didn't take this picture - I got it from Google. There is no snow on the ground here, thankfully.

Anyhoos...so as you can see, there is a very nice, relatively easy way to climb up the mountain, starting with the footpath that goes off to the left from the top of the road in this picture. That path curves up to the right around the mountain with a very  nice stone staircase that has been placed into the side of the mountain. This makes it pretty simple to climb up to the top, and lets you get up there without losing too much breath.

Yeah. Jacob and I missed that path.

In my defense, I had never made the climb before. But we kept going around to the right, and ended up heaving ourselves up the much, much steeper slope with not much path to speak of -- more like footholds cut into the hill. There was a bit of scrambling up a tiny rock wall portion of the mountain, but we got to the top with little problems.

I was really excited.

So was Jacob.

The view was indeed amazing.

 As you can see, the view made the unexpectedly-arduous trek totally worth it.

So then came the time when we needed to descend - for we had other misadventures to attend to. Since we'd missed the easy way up, we both agreed that we would take it on the way down. As we prepared to descend, we realized that there was a flaw in this plan: we hadn't taken the staircase up. So we didn't know where the staircase began. Crap.

So we started climbing down the middle of the mountain, hoping to intersect with the easy path at some point. Well - we didn't. We ended up climbing down A NEARLY VERTICAL INCLINE OF ALMOST SHEER ROCK. WE WERE LEGITIMATELY ROCK-CLIMBING DOWN AN EXTINCT VOLCANO.

It was pretty awesome. A little scary. But awesome. There were a few times when the rocks under our feet got a little shaky, and we slipped and fell/slid on our asses (by "our" I mean "mine," as I am a traditionally-built lady and weigh significantly more than Jacob McLankyFace). BUT WE WERE VICTORIOUS.

Yeah. We climbed that. THAT'S RIGHT.

Needless to say - the next time I climbed Arthur's Seat, I made sure to find the EASY way up.

Speas and Eichhorn Do Edinburgh, Part One

Eureka! A blog post!

I know, I know, I know. I've been neglecting my blog. But I'll make it up to you, Blog, I promise. I'll buy you some nice HTML codes to make it up to you.

Anyhoos, this past weekend was very exciting, because Jacob came from Prague to visit! He's the first person from Wake that I've seen this semester, and we had a really wonderful time wandering around Edinburgh and seeing all of the sites. I've been having random bouts of slight homesickness recently, and hanging out with someone from home was really great and reassuring - plus, after a month and a half of functioning in Czech, I'll bet that an English-speaking country was a nice break for Jacob.

So on Friday afternoon I met Jacob at the airport, and we bused back into the city for lunch with no problems. This was very comforting, because airports make me really nervous - I'm always terrified that some crazy, random happenstance will pop up out of nowhere, like a passport or security problem, or the plane had to land somewhere else or something, and everything will derail. Luckily this did not happen, and we got into Edinburgh without a worry.

So after we had lunch at my favorite baguette shop on Nicolson Street, we dropped off our stuff at my room, and we went to visit the Palace of Holyroodhouse, a gorgeous building that I have walked past but not actually gone in. The Palace is Queen Elizabeth II's (and other members of the royal family's) official residence whenever they are in Scotland, although it's arguably more famous as the main home of Mary Queen of Scots. We couldn't take pictures inside, but it was absolutely beautiful - it had dozens of impressive tapestries and paintings and original (17th-century) plasterwork ceilings, as well as an entire exhibit (with jewels and heirlooms) on the Stuarts, from Mary's immediate ancestors to the 18th-century Jacobites.

The Palace of Holyrood House. Where the Queen lives, yo.

Yakob! They gave us cool audio guide tour things. We were really excited.

 The personal chambers of Mary Queen of Scots were also preserved, including the tiny dining room where Mary's second husband Lord Darnley (who was an asshole of the first degree, by the way) and his posse killed her personal secretary David Rizzio. They broke into the Queen's apartments, dragged Rizzio from behind her while they held her at gunpoint, stabbed him 56 times, and left his body on the floor. The Queen was seven months pregnant, and they still have a plaque on the wall showing where Darnley & Co. left Rizzio's body after they killed him. It was eerie. My inner history nerd almost had an aneurysm.

After a lovely tour of the Palace (and after Jacob had to drag me away from all of the pretty pretty [and creepy] history), we wandered around the adjacent Holyrood Abbey and the Palace Gardens. Absolutely stunning.

The ruins of Holyrood Abbey.

Holyrood Abbey with Arthur's Seat in the background. He will feature heavily in the sequel to this post.

We topped this day off with a trip to Red Box, which is a build-your-own-meal kind of Chinese restaurant, where they serve your food in big paper boxes and give you a pair of chopsticks and let you fend for yourself. Quite possibly THE BEST CHINESE I HAVE EVER HAD IN MY LIFE.

SERIOUSLY.

I may or may not have reached nirvana.

My heart's in the Highlands...

“My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,

My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer -

A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe;

My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.”

Robert Burns, when he wasn’t busy getting his face slapped all over Scottish money or putting the moves on some unsuspecting Highland lass, actually wrote some pretty cool and beautiful poetry—including the above verse. Sentimentality and pastoral images aside (oh those crazy Romantics), it’s a pretty accurate statement: the Highlands are absolutely AMAZING.

I spent the past two weekends in the Highlands - last weekend in Insch, Aberdeenshire, and this past weekend about 100-some miles west in Inverness - and I absolutely loved every minute. Because I'm so behind on blog posts, I'm not going to try and write retroactive blog posts about the weekends; instead, I'm going to link everyone to my photo albums from both weekends, and everyone should be able to see them.

Also - I will get better about posting. I promise.


INSCH HOMESTAY: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=559220&id=820825600&l=d793ca4911

IFSA-BUTLER TRIP TO INVERNESS: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=560114&id=820825600&l=1112721521

 Also, if these links don't work, let me know. We'll figure something out.