Edinburgh

We packed up the car in Pitlochry this morning and headed off, but not before writing in the comments book.  I’d read through all the past ones and people had been quite creative (and also had waxed lyrical about a former staff member called Chad, who I think I am sad that I didn’t meet lol) but I just left a little scrawl at the top of the page.

We went through Birnam on the way down to Edinburgh.  Yup, as in Birnam Wood, as in MacBeth.  There’s only one tree left from the original wood now, an epic oak, which, of course, I took way too many pictures of.  Dad looked a bit concerned  when I kept saying things like ‘Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and Thane shall be, what thou art promised’ in a spooky voice, so I had to give him the major plot points of MacBeth.  I’m not a huge Shakespeare fan – we did a few plays in high school English, but none of them ever really grabbed me, apart from MacBeth.  Maybe because we also kind-of did it in drama one year.  I played one of the ‘witches’ (in this version we were the school witches-with-a-b, in sexed-up uniforms and knee-high boots.  I wasn’t very good at this, and spent most of every drama class being told by the teacher to ‘be more provocative’.  I can still remember a lot of Lady MacBeth’s speeches though lol).   We were kind of right in the middle of MacBeth country; Glamis was just up the road and Cawdor was further north.  We didn’t go to either one though, just the Birnam oak.

Also in Birnam was a Beatrix Potter exhibition, which on the literary scale is about as far removed subject-wise as you can possibly get from MacBeth!  I’d seen the movie Miss Potter when it came out, so didn’t learn much that I didn’t already know, but it was still pretty cool, and I bought some presents for my goddaughter and her new brother there.

Got on the M9 after that and headed to Edinburgh, stopping off just before the Forth bridge (over the Firth of Forth, which, like Anathoth jam, makes me feel like I have an epic lithp) to have lunch beside another little port.  Then had lots of fun trying to find our way into the city centre.  The actual place was easy enough to find, because there’s a whopping great castle on a rock in the middle of it, but all of the roads seemed to lead OUT of there, and none IN.  I swear it was worse than the Christchurch one-way system.  Eventually found the hostel.  Like the Pitlochry one you get your bed assigned to you, and instead of having numbers they have names, which go with whatever theme the room has (there’s Lord of the Rings, Winnie the Pooh, etc).  We’re in the ‘Happy Days’ dorm, and my bed name is…Arnold!  This is only funny (and maybe not even then) when you know that my predictive-text name (the word that comes up first when you try to write my name in predictive) is Arnold.  I laughed.  Then had to explain it to dad, and both the receptionists.

Went off exploring.  Decided we didn’t have enough time to properly explore the castle so we’re leaving it till tomorrow.  Found a Writer’s Museum instead, focussing on Robert Louis Stevenson (I totally didn’t know he was Scottish.  But then I have never read any of his books either, I don’t think), Sir Walter Scott, and Robert Burns.  I sat down in a chair at the end of it and started falling asleep so dad sent me back off to the hostel and kept exploring.  On my way back I found a shop that sold…wait for it…Maltesers ice cream.  We totally need these in New Zealand.  I had Maltesers here the other day, actually, and thought they weren’t quite the same as the ones in NZ (I think the chocolate is made differently, maybe?  Our Cadbury’s Caramello is way better too – the stuff here is pure sugar and WAY too sweet) but the ice creams are brilliant.  And in exchange we can introduce the Brits to those Goody-Gumdrops-on-a-stick things.

And now I am back in the hostel.

Today I remembered two things that I left out of previous blogs:

The first is what we did on our first night in Pitlochry.  We visited the Hydro-electric power station, because dad likes hydro-electric power stations.  While there, I saw my first-ever fish ladder.  When we were on Skye, planning this bit of our journey, I had pointed out the area and all the stuff there was to do (MacBeth and Beatrix Potter for me, power station for dad, etc) and laughingly mentioned the fish ladder, thinking it was some kind of joke (I was picturing a fish climbing a ladder).  Dad looked surprised and asked me did I not know what one was?  Me: ‘WTF?  They’re actually a thing?’  They’re a series of pools, arranged in step formation, that the fish can swim/jump over so they can get over the dam.

So a fish ladder is a real thing, but it still makes me LOL.

The other thing was also in Pitlochry: LIME AND SODA!  We went to a pub across the road from the hostel for beer o’clock and the barman asked me what I wanted.  ‘Do you have soda water?’ I asked.  ‘Yep,’ he replied (I guess they must in Scotland, coz people drink whisky and soda).  ‘And do you have lime cordial?’ I continued (I was getting a bit excited by this point).  ‘Yes, we do.’  ‘Ooh!  Can I please have a lime and soda?’  ‘Sure…’ (clearly unsure as to why this was such a momentous event for me).  It was actually a little bit too sweet, and dad had to finish it for me, but it was  a lime and soda!

/ridiculous excitedness

Dad has just come back and informed me that he found a cute pub for dinner (I think he is even less keen on the idea of eating the haggis that we bought than I am), and that we are going on a ghost tour of the city, which I am quite excited about.  Sure, I don’t believe in ghosts, but I can still enjoy a good ghost tour in the same way I can enjoy Buffy without believing in vampires!