Subject: Scotland part 5 of 10 Date: Wed, 07 Jun 95 09:24:15 -0700 By Tuesday morning I was finally acclimatized to the British timezone.... I can tell because on Tuesday morning I was very reluctant to get up and in normal times I am *not* a morning person. To say the least. There was no incentive to wake us like 'breakfast is between 8 and 9', so I just slept and slept and slept while John got up, had a shower, made coffee and finally got bored enough to wander up and wake me. Jenny Glover had left cereal, fruit bread, regular bread, butter, a wheel of something that looked like Brie and oakcakes to go with it. Wow. Now *that* was a breakfast. The hotel breakfasts I kinda expected to be as amazing as they were, but after 'the home breakfasts' that John and I have, which are either a bowl of cold cereal or just nothing other than a mocha or latte with a biscotti or some other cookie, this was marvelous. John had found the coffee maker and made good use of it, and the hot, bitter mug really helped wake me up. We ate leisurely and I read part of one of the books near the table, and then we packed up a day pack and went into Edinburgh. The Glovers had not only provided us with the street map but also instructions for which bus to catch to get downtown and how much to pay and where to catch it in both directions. We weren't at all sure what we wanted to see. I mostly just wanted to go shopping downtown, eat a lunch there and see what happened. What mostly happened was rain. Lots of it. Even with our Seattle attitudes (i.e. It's raining, so what, it always rains) when it came down hard for hours on end and/or whenever we were out on the street I started getting tired of it around 4pm. Yes, it takes a little while for me, now, to get tired of rain, especially when there are fascinating shops to attend to. The very first thing we did was go to the tourist information center. We found out about the ferries, wandered the shelves there for some really lovely postcards and a touring map of Scotland. John got all the time information on the ferries and found out that we had to go to a travel agent in order to actually book the ferry crossing so that we'd have a reserved spot. They said that there was a small office of the travel agent just down the stairs to the right. So we went out into the rain, clattered down the stairs and found the small office completely busy. So we waited until they were done and found out that they couldn't do it, yet, that we had to go further down Princes street and go to the right side to find the travel shop that could do the booking for us. So up the street we went and found all kinds of fascinating places to explore. I know that most of them weren't really native to Scotland, and that a good number of them were probably meant merely for tourists or those that wished to follow a trend, but it was really fascinating to discover some of the similarities and differences between the shops there and the shops one can find in the U.S.. There was one shop that Jenny had said we might find the lace weight yarn, but at a price, which was Jenner's, so we ducked in there to find an astonishing array of merchandise in the one store. It was like the old department stores that had a section for everything under the sun. Not only all the clothing, but a floor of toys, a whole floor for crafts and yarn arts and the like, and a whole area for lingerie that would typify our Victoria's Secret. There was a restaurant and take-away foods as well, advertised on the other floors. The yarn selection was pretty extensive for a department store, with a wide range of quality, everything from Orlon to Rowan wools; but it was all regular knitting yarns. One rather interesting to try and figure out was seeing a 500g skein of wool on sale for 10 pounds... and I had to figure out the price in U.S. dollars to ounces. Yeep. It was about a pound of wool, we figured, and the price was around $16, which is a pretty good price for 100% virgin wool yarn. It is, however, a rather bad price for raw wool, and I had boxes of just raw wool at home already that could easily be turned into 'virgin wool yarn' of that kind of thickness, especially since it was just a two ply yarn. But for a moment it was terribly tempting. If only they'd had some colors other than cream and oatmeal and gray and pink and light teal... Further down Princes street and we ran into a Marks and Spencer, which we'd seen here and there on our trip, but hadn't ever been into. Steve had given us the enticing tidbit that M&S sold crispy duck with pancakes, hoisen sauce, and spring onions. So we *had* to go down to the take-away food store and see what there was to see. It make Larry's (the Seattle 'posh grocery store' that does the best job of any grocery store we've ever seen of carrying specialty foods and foods that are prepared for quick eating) look utterly shabby, at least in the prepared foods sections. There were rows and rows and rows of *refridgerated* cases that were filled with boxes and boxes of prepared foods. Everything from tandoori chicken to beef and Yorkshire pudding, from the crispy duck to a variety of 20 cream cakes, from tortellini to roast lamb with mint sauce. There was an entire case of vegetarian sandwiches, another case of chicken sandwiches, and two cases of meat sandwiches. It was completely astonishing the volume they had of refrigerated as opposed to frozen meals, 'cause those meals would have to be eaten before the expiration dates a week at most. We got a Takki chicken sandwich with cucumber, yogurt mayonnaise and chutney. We also picked up cans of pop and a bag of chips and ogled other things that we might bring back with us, including cans of a traditional style lemonade. When we exited the store, however, the rain was just coming down harder. We tried to find a place to sit, but most of the covered areas already had people in them, some of them not to clean and not too well off. Finally we headed for the art gallery, which was housed in marble with cornices over the entry ways. We sat behind huge columns and ate our lunch there while watching business people hurry by in suits and trenchcoats and watching the rain come pouring down. The sandwich was spicy and rich and cool all at the same time, a really marvelous mixture of textures as well as tastes. The lemonade was really good too, so I resolved to get some to take home as well. Back out into the rain, not so bad after being fortified, and we ran right into the Thomas Cook travelshop we'd been pointed at. We waited for quite a while, and then a lady came back into the service area and served us beautifully. She was cheerful, quick and very good about answering questions, showing us the screen on the computer so that we could see what she was doing. She booked our tickets for the ferry, gave us everything in a neat booklet, told us all we needed to know to get on and got us out of there fairly quickly. It was really cool. We tried all the remaining phone calls we had to do after wandering up the street a bit to a phone booth. The rain fell softly outside as John called the Rover place and found out real prices, and I decided not to do anything. By that point we were wet enough that I finally could just let go of caring, and we meandered happily through the rain for a while, just looking into shops and various pubs and things. There was one department store that was having a spring sale, and I found a lovely brown/bronze sweater with some texture patterns on it that were fake Aran/cables. It was a fairly thin sweater, and only 20% wool, but that meant that it was washable. It was also half price, and at a price that would be laughable in the U.S. for anything that had any wool in it. So I bought it right there and wore it out into the rain. Yum. Warm. A bit more wandering, sight seeing and the like and we ended up in a pub where John had a pint of stout and I had a hot tea, which came with a sweet biscuit. It warmed me through from the inside out, and we were off again. We walked along the back alleys and reached the end of the street, and went back to the Bridge where we first got off the bus. The ride back was quiet and on the second floor, through the soft rain. When we got back to the Glovers, I changed jeans and thought about taking a hot shower, but the kids were in the shower and in the warmth of the house, there was no problem with being cold anymore. Jenny got home and we organized a walk and then dinner with Steve in town. The Walk turned into quite the Adventure. We knew which way we wanted to go, so we headed off in that direction. It was actually a lot of fun, as the rain stopped as we were going out. Well, mostly... John and I wore hooded rain jackets this time, and that made quite a difference. Just long, straight strides, and with all the soccer that I've been playing, there was no problem with just walking for as long as was necessary. Jenny kept apologizing for making us walk so much, and both John and I said, quite as earnestly, that we weren't having any problems with it. I was having some problems with my knee, but not because of the walking, more the rain than anything. Changing weather does strange things to my knee, now, and when I had the problems with my knee, the rain slowed up. So I wasn't about to complain. Edinburgh is a lovely city. Even more so by foot, and the Royal Botanical Gardens were utterly fabulous. We wandered by the ponds and then through the Garden to try and be on the lookout for a bus that would take us to the University. There were so many trees, lovely expanses of lawn, and hillsides and hillsides of plants of all kinds. The ponds had koi and water lilies and a small waterfall and creek feeding it and probably aerating the water. There was, however, no bus station on the far side of the Gardens. We kept walking. At one point, there was a dirt path next to a stream, and I saw a car that looked as if it was driving over the stream, so I pointed in that direction and said that it kinda looked like there was a bridge over the 'stream' that turned out to be the Leith River. We went another six or so blocks and found a very nice, busy street. Jenny blinked, found that she didn't quite know where we were, and with our time limit coming fairly close to when we were to meet Steve, she waved down a taxi. Not just *any* taxi, but one of those lovely, old, SOLID, black taxi's that look the same as those that are in the 50's movies. They're BIG, black, run on diesel and have more seats in the back compartment than one thinks quite possible. We easily seated the five us in the back of this particular one and the driver whisked us away. It turned out that we were walking in the direction of Glasgow. Quite happily lost, as the taxi dropped us off right in front of Forbidden Planet, and I got an eyeful of some comics that are published in the UK and can't be FOUND in the US. There were also *books*. And FP was closed, luckily, or I would shudder to think what kind of damage I would have instantly done to our credit card credit. We walked the short distance to Steve's building and a young American was walking up to the door to open it with a card, so Tara and Robert rushed the door to hold it open for us, and nearly trampled the young man who just laughed and held open the door for us. We met Steve up in his office, marveled at the program he'd put together for editing molecular diagrams in Word (I still don't have any clue how it's even possible) and then we wandered off to a Thai restaurant. It looked like a tiny hole in the wall sort of restaurant until we actually got inside. Jenny noted just how startling the brand new theater across the street was in contrast to the architecture of all the buildings around it. The theater was all glass and steel next to the flying buttresses of the stone buildings centuries old all surrounding it. The juxtaposition was a startling contrast. The interior of the restaurant was richly decorated, and the menus were extensive. The food was quite good, and served on warming trays with candles under filigree meshes. One thing I really liked was when Steve said to Tara, "While you must try everything at least once, it doesn't mean that you have to like it." Which, I think, hits right on the head the part of the formula most parents forget to pay attention to. We were treated to another of those lovely taxi rides back to their home. We had fun talking with Jenny and Steve over a pot of tea and several books in their extensive (and I do mean EXTENSIVE) collection of books. I had fun reading through several short stores that I may or may not have been able to find in the US and then they gave us a whole collection of fanzines that were edited by Tara and Robert! The fanzines were really fun, thoughtful and an interesting collection of art, stories and opinions. Jenny said that they were for whomever wasn't driving to read to the person who was driving, and we made quite a bit of use of them that way the next few days. ------ end of part 5 of 10 ----- Copyright 1995 by Phyllis L. Rostykus. All rights reserved.