Over the weeks leading up to our trip, Rachel had been making a new skirt, which she finished by hand while we were in Skye.
It’s made of wool, woven at Locharron of Scotland in the MacEwan tartan.
Our last evening in Edinburgh, we decided to wander the city with my camera and see if we couldn't find a few places where the skirt and the environment suited one another.
Rachel is a lovely model, and we found some places in the quieter streets just north of the Royal Mile that worked really well.
So. . . uhhh, Edinburgh.
.
The view from the front of a double-decker will never disappoint me.
This is the point where I'm going to depart from the one-to-two-posts-per-day-about-specific-things format. For a couple reasons:
1) I'm home now (Editor's note from an airport lounge: [bitter, psychotic laughter]), and writing these is time consuming. Often in past trips the last few days have always languished in unwritten-purgatory. It's quite sad. So I'm trying to make this easy to finish up rather than just making it seem like I'm still in Scotland until whenever I travel next.
2) There was a theme throughout my time in Edinburgh with Rachel that became so consistent, it was almost funny, despite starting out pretty heartbreaking.
The theme was "You can't have that. Sorry. Here's something else you never would have found if not for the failure of your Plan A."
The "something else" was delightful and charming in its own way.
And this happened again.
And again.
And again.
These people intend to ask Edinburgh public servants to act as their pallbearers, so the city can let them down one last time.
Allow me to list the things we'd planned for Edinburgh.
- Dance! Go to a specific Scottish dance (a Ceilidh, pronounced "Kaylee") on Tuesday night that Rachel had been to in the before-times on her last trip and was very excited to revisit.
- Gin and Tonic Sommelier! Visit a specific bar Rachel remembers doing incredible things with Gin and Tonics by interviewing you and then making you custom drinks based on your answers.
- Gin! Buy a bottle of a particular Gin (Daffie's) for Rachel's sister, who had grown very fond of it while living in Scotland and who had not been able to find it in the states.
- Ice Cream! Visit Mary's Milk Bar, an Ice Cream restaurant my partner Karen had sung the praises of for its remarkable flavors.
Beyond these, we figured we'd wing it.
Every one of these proved impossible.
- Dancing is full: The Ceilidh, it turns out, has become wildly popular since 2019, and is now SOLD OUT, weeks in advance, despite just being a weekly dance? Absolutely wild. We'd never seen anything like it, and since it was a weekly it didn't occur to us at any point to buy tickets in advance. I mean, who does that?
- Sommelier gone: The Hermitage bar's brilliant custom Gin and Tonic nerd has moved on, and their bartender now recommends Bombay Sapphire when asked for a gin recommendation.
It's still a very pretty bar though.
- Sorry Mario, your gin no longer exists: Daffie's is no longer being produced and it is suspected that there isn't a bottle for sale left in the city.
- Ice Cream has Melted. Mary's Milk Bar experienced a random Freezer failure in the past few weeks and was closed until literally the moment we left the country (This is not hyperbole -- they re-opened at 11AM Friday, our flight out for Heathrow was scheduled to begin boarding at 11:05).
In addition, we attempted to make a couple of plans of our own throughout the two days we were there.
- Japanese dinner! We tried to make plans at "Aki", a restaurant that was supposed to have pretty good Udon soups. When we arrived we found the restaurant in perfect condition but mysteriously closed, without explanation.
- French Lunch. We tried to have lunch at "Chez Jules" a French restaurant with good reviews (comically packed at 13:20 on a Thursday, would have been an hour wait for a table).
It was as if Edinburgh had decided that if we made ANY plan, it was ordained that the plan must fail.
However--and this was truly wild-- everywhere we turned when plans went awry, we found another thing, different, remarkably pleasant, sometimes event better than what we'd planned.
So,
Dance: After having our Ceilidh hopes dashed, a bit of frantic sidewalk facebooking turned up a Blues Dance Edinburgh group, which had a post from mere hours earlier announcing a very last minute dance in a cellar bar just south of the Meadows, which proved to be warm and welcoming and we had some lovely dances there. We would never have known it existed if we'd tried to plan it earlier because it was announced that very morning.
What's this?
It's a tiny basement bar full of my people!
Gin Sommelier: The Hermitage had a Gin I had been hoping to try, and we felt no hesitation ordering it since we were on our own recognizance.
Glaswegin's bottle design is maybe my favorite bottle design I've seen in recent memory, gutsy and simple and aggressively pandering to a hipster design aesthetic I can't help but appreciate. It reminded me of this excellent XKCD.
Where has all the Gin gone? : Stopping by a local Gin store not only helped us find an alternative to Daffie's, it also meant I could find a small bottle of Glaswegin, as well as a bottle of the delicious Hills and Harbour, which I found very pleasant and brought home with me.
Ice Cream: Ok, here technically we struck out. The alternative whiskey-infused ice cream we found also had raspberry in it, and the ripple they used was much, much too sweet. Technically I can't chalk this up as a victory for Edinburgh. But after a couple of weeks chock-full of indulgent food, it served as a good reminder that "More isn't always better, Linus, sometimes it's just more."
Aki closure: Aki being closed led us to discover that Edinburgh has an Izakaya restaurant that specializes in Omurisu ("Home rice")?! Which is a bit like having a restaurant that specializes in easy comfort food exclusively. In my family it would be like finding "Garbage Eggs" as a the house special on the menu.
The food was incredible. We were pretty hungry by the time we got there, but . . . damn.
Best okra I've ever had in a restaurant. Full stop.
(They also had a really good cocktail called an "Iwakura Accomplishment" with Gin, Plum Sake, Green Chartreuse, and Vanilla. Definitely might spend some time trying to replicate it).
The house Specialty was delicious.
And Chez Jules having an hour-wait sent us wandering down the street, where we stumbled past a deafening jackhammer on Thistle Street directly into Cafe Marlayne, which seemed to have a total of three women working (one front of house, one sous chef, and the owner), they served us the best French meal I've had since Bistro De Voraces in Lyon in 2019. Absolutely divine.
Wild Garlic Soup
Sea Bream -- Incredible and on a perfect bed of greens
Almond Frangipane with Rhubarb. So, so, good.
And along the way we had several lovely little unplanned moments as well -- I've posted pictures of some of them.
And on the last night, we had a lovely dinner of Mussels in a restaurant near our hotel, and decided that despite the million setbacks, Edinburgh had been a lovely experience, and we were glad to have had it.
So, this is one of those delightful pieces of nonsense trivia that I love.
Soldiers are nonsense creatures that shouldn't be left unsupervised.
This has been proven many times over, certainly my own soldiers when I was a sergeant managed to remind me of this universal truth every day we were together (and some days we weren't).
But my 'Joes', as unruly as they got . . . well, at least they never bought a bear.
The Polish II Corp, which fought under British command during WW2 (the story of how that happened is wild and I highly recommend the wikipedia page for Ander's Army if you want the weird details) on their way through Iran en route to Italy, bought a bear.
His name was Wojtek.
They brought him to the war with them.
He traveled with them throughout the campaign, was enlisted to help pay for his rations (as a Private, but promoted to Corporal eventually!) and he even helped carry ammunition crates in at least one key battle!
I have known about Wojtek for a long time, but I had forgotten this bit about what happened after:
And when the war was over and the Polish II corps was being dissolved, his company was brought to Scotland, and he retired as a resident of the Edinburgh zoo, where he lived to the ripe old age of 21.
And for that reason, he has a memorial in the park here!
So of course we had to visit that.
So, Gaelic is a language with a lot of similarity to English, and because of how Scottish public signage policy works, Gaelic is generally required to be printed alongside English (or in some cases the signs are only in Gaelic).
And much of Gaelic is beautiful and elegant and graceful but. . .not all of it.
Which is why I could not stop giggling whenever I saw an Ambulance in Scotland.
Behold. The Majestic
AMBAILEANS
On our way back to Edinburgh airport to return Nell, we went on a small nature walk, and then stopped by the Falkirk wheel for a boat-tour of a marvel of modern engineering.
The Falkirk wheel is . . . well, it's basically a boat elevator.
It replaces something like 9 traditional locks that were once required to move passenger and cargo boats across Scotland via series of inland canals.
All those locks existed to to help move boats through a roughly 30 meter elevation change.
Navigating those locks used to take most of a day.
Now there are just two, one above, and one below, the Falkirk wheel.
The wheel itself cycles in just 5 minutes, and it runs on the energy required to boil about 8 kettles of tea. The rest of the energy required is potential energy provided by the water flowing into the system, and the offset weight between each of the wheel's two gondolas. It's pretty ingenious.
These people are starting to feel better after their ordeal.
Farewell, Lerwick!
We boarded the Hrossey around 15:30 local time, and found our cabin (very near the bow of the ship) neat and tidy, with plenty of amenities that our pod-lounge had lacked -- including our own bathroom and a nice set of outlets to charge out devices. Overconfident that everything would be just as delightful as it was 48 hours earlier when we'd come north, we made excited plans about what we might get for dinner as we went up to the viewing deck and watched Lerwick slip away off the boat's starboard side.
These people have not looked at a sea conditions report
It's a beautiful town and the weather was brisk, mostly clear along the Shetland coast, so we lingered in the heavy wind and enjoyed the bracing air while it lasted, then headed below deck as it looked like there might be spot of light rain.
Our cabin had come with drink vouchers, and so we grabbed a couple of Brew Dog's excellent Black Heart, the stout Rachel had discovered on our trip north, excited to settle in and finish Master and Commander, a ridiculous movie we'd started a couple of days before and decided to break into segments. As we were ordering our drinks we found ourselves swaying on our feet, as Hrossey got past the Sumburgh lighthouse we'd visited earlier and into the wider open water between Shetland and Orkney.
By the time we reached our cabin we were laughing to each other about how funny it felt to careen down a hallway so awkwardly, but we made it to our cabin and settled in to watch our movie.
We found this hallway's temporary gyrations very amusing. We were fools.
With two beers, two empty stomachs, and a movie about British and French frigates chasing each other in the dangerous, storm-tossed seas off the horn of South America.
We did not finish the movie, or our beers.
We skipped dinner entirely.
We did eventually manage to make it into our bunk beds and sleep, fitfully, and I awoke as the seas calmed when we approached Orkney around 23:00. I staggered up to the bar and prevailed upon them for a panini and a Cider because I suspected that if my stomach remained that empty the resultant hunger stomachache would make the illness worse. This proved true, I think, as I felt better once I had eaten and had a drink, and managed additional fitful sleep until morning.
I managed to snag breakfast for myself and toast for Rachel, who was still feeling very nauseated, and we recovered Nell, ourselves in much worse condition than we'd been 15 hours earlier when we'd left her.
We departed Aberdeen haggard, and with a drive before us that would end in another--much more sedate, and much shorter--boatride, but one with a remarkable twist.
Next stop, the Falkirk wheel.
Sadly, the Shetland Textile Museum was closed both Sundays and Mondays, an oversight on our part, but there were still a fair number of textiles, and lots of other cool things to learn, in the Shetland museum!
Remember what I was saying about Shetland Lace? Check out this piece by the reception desk, just inside the door, which was a fantastic model ship made 100 years ago as part of a fundraiser, rediscovered by the model-makers great-granddaughter, who then worked with a craftsman to restore the body, and she knit the incredible lacework and made the sails to finish out the piece's second life.
Such detail!
We learned a lot of things along the way--the idea of using butter as currency, (and giving the lousy butter to the tax-man), both resonated with me.
Bog Butter and its many uses
This model wooden house was accompanied by an explanation that reminded me of the mail-order box-car kit houses that Sears, Roebuck & Co. used to sell in the USA.
The black veil was just gorgeous, I wish I had carried my "serious" camera with me to the museum. It was so fine it was hard to photograph well with a smartphone.
Fun fact! The Norse used silver bracelets as a form of transportable currency.
Shetland is made up of so very many types of rocks.
The replicas of the Pictish treasure!
These are the Pictish treasures I mentioned earlier. We had seen their burial place on St. Ninian's the day before.
Sadly, they weren't the originals because weirdly the originals are in Edinburgh, at the National Museum. It felt like a strange case of intra-country colonialism, especially when we finally saw the original pieces a couple of days later, seeming a bit awkward and drab, devoid of their larger Shetlander context.
Full to the brim of interesting history about a tiny place full of lush and vibrant stories, we made our way back to Nell and eventually buried her (to a soundtrack of cacophonous beeps) in the hold of the MV Hrossey, another of the Northlink Ferries, which was to take us back to Aberdeen overnight.
Unbeknownst to us, we were going to have a swell time.
But not a swell time.
If you get my drift.
