The thoughts & opinions of Sassarella, the Queen of Sass as she cavorts in 's Gravenhage & beyond. Brought to you by CES's (Chief Executive Slaves) of Big Skanky Ho Inc.
I arrived in Edinburgh 45 minutes later than when I thought I would and without a single Scottish pound to my name. By the time I found a bank machine, a phone and the bus to get me downtown, it was pretty damn late. By the time I actually got to the bus stop to meet Lena, it was way past midnight.
I was a little irritated. Lena, on the other hand, was beyond nice about it. We walked back to her place, just a hop skip and a jump away from bus stop and talked until 3am.
The next morning dawned grey and drab, but coming from the Netherlands, I could hardly complain. Lena had some shopping to do, so the two of us got dressed and headed out to engage in the spending of money.
I didn't spend much, because every time I did the mental conversion I had a mild heart attack. I took out a hundred pounds from the bank for my stay and realised that it was 250 dollars. Ow. Owie. On the other hand, Edinburgh is totally fabulous, really pretty, with fun shopping and lots of cool places to wander. Everywhere you go, you have to stop and stare and say something inane like, "wow! That's so cute!" or "Charming!" or… well, you get the idea. I read in my book that Edinburgh has over 16,000 historical buildings and it's not hard to believe. One of my favourites was the university library (I'm sure it has a more impressive name, but that's the best I can do). This massive grey domed monster opened out onto a massive courtyard and buildings on all four sides. During the day it was pretty neat. At night, it was completely freaky.
This seems to be par for the course for Edinburgh though. It all looks cute and charming during the day. At night, it's a horror movie set. Really really cool. That night, I was a total suck and while Lena and her roommate Kate went out, I lay around like a slug because I was too tired.
I know I know. I suck.
The next morning, I got up pretty late and decided to do some exploring on my own, as Lena and Kate were both laid low with hangovers. Armed with a map and a great big bottle of water, I headed on over to the Royal Mile, the stretch of road between the Edinburgh castle on one end and Holyrood Palace on the other. I walked up to the castle first and made a couple of stops on the way, pretty much drawn to things that looked interesting. I ended up in St Giles Cathedral, a great big monstrosity of a Presbyterian Church. I was told that it started life as a Catholic church, but was eventually converted during the Reformation, which is why it's not quite as ornate as your typical cathedral. The lady at the information desk was not only informative but really nice and we ended up chatting for upwards of an hour. I ended up giving her my e-mail address and inviting her to stay if she ever visited the Netherlands.
I carried on up the Royal Mile passing many a cashmere and whiskey shop on the way. I eventually got to the castle where I paid the exorbitant fee to get in and have a look around. The castle, unlike how you would picture a castle, is a bunch of pretty impressive stone buildings defended by a wall. It's a not a big white building with towers and turrets and fluttering pennants a la Disney, because that castle is actually in Germany, not too far outside of Munich. The Edinburgh castle is pretty cool in a Tower of London sort of way, in that everything looks really old and brown and full of history. You can go into the room where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to James VI of England. I was hoping for blood or bits of afterbirth or at least a stain on the sheets, but apparently they've cleaned the place up in the intervening 450 odd years and in fact removed all of the furniture, so all you get in this room is four walls, a couple of windows and a plaque with the above-mentioned information.
I also had a look at the Scottish crown jewels and the Stone of Destiny and the really old St Margaret's chapel. I also spent some time pretending I was directing my army (more mental Godzilla!) from the view from the gun batteries. There are great views of the city from here since the Castle is on the highest hill. Which makes sense I guess. Not only can you impress the peasantry from up here, but it's probably the most defensible spot.
I left there and decided to make my way down to the other end of the Royal Mile to Holyrood Palace. Since I wasn't carrying a watch, as per usual, I didn't realise that the place would be closed by the time I got there. The nice guards let me in the gate to take a picture, but sadly, I didn't get to go inside. The building is really pretty though, way more modern than the castle. I can't really comment on it more because I was only there for about a minute. Not far outside the palace gates are the new Scottish parliament buildings and if you take a walk around them you're right up against Arthur's seat, the huge hill that overlooks Edinburgh. I didn't really have time to walk up it at this point, as it was getting dark, so I walked part of the way around and oohed and aahed appropriately. It was pretty neat.
I walked back to Lena's place at this point, getting lost only once. Edinburgh had a great big fire recently, which has blocked off part of the city. Lena explained that this had been the more artsy part of town and a lot of artist's studios had gone up in the blaze. They haven't done anything with it yet, since there's a bit of a debate as to what to do with the property. Long story short, my map hadn't been adjusted for fire blockage and I ended up having to figure out an alternate route. Not a catastrophe by any means. Though pretty sad for the city of Edinburgh.
Lena and Kate had just gotten a TV, which was pretty exciting, so we sat and watched some music awards hosted by the Osbournes. I can't remember which one it was, but it started with Justin and Britney being completely embarassed by Mama Osbourne, which was pretty damn funny and then it pretty much went downhill from there.
I hauled ass off the couch at this point and headed over to the Tron Church (that's right, I did say Tron) where there was a group meeting for a haunted tour of Edinburgh. Edinburgh has a pretty gory and icky history and lots of creepy alleys and tunnels underneath the city, so like I said before, it's pretty creepy at night. There's more than one haunted tour of the city and you can actually get tours running into each other which is less than creepy. On the other hand, Sunday nights in January are pretty slow, so there was no one about except for hardcore drunks and nerds like me.
The tour ended up in some of the Edinburgh vaults which was totally fun and you get a good scare at the end, which is always good.
I headed back to Lena's at this point and after a bit more TV, it was off to bed. I already wrote what happened the next morning so I'll stop here.
Suffice it to say, I'm heading back to Edinburgh again sometime soon.
I would get down to writing about Edinburgh, but I still don't feel like it. In the meantime, I can tell you what I did this weekend. I went to Haarlem and then saw 8 Mile. Haarlem was charming in the way that all small old Dutch cities are charming... winding narrow streets, cobblestones, fun shopping, and a great big church in the middle. I spent a few hours there, browsing through their Saturday market, eating delicious food and hanging out with a nice Brit and a twitchy Dalmatian named Spring. I also went kind of apeshit on buying stroopwafels, so if anyone wants any (and these are the seriously good ones) drop me a line and I'll mail you some.
I went to see 8 Mile Saturday evening and I found it to be kind of... blah. Not that great and not sucky enough to mock either. So in the love it or hate it stakes, I end up on the fence, as always. Still, I did end up having a Baileys and hot chocolate in a nice bar in the Hague, which was nice and I did manage to talk myself out of buying movie food, which was also nice.
I'm hopefully going to go see a movie at the Rotterdam film fest on Thursday and maybe I'll head out to Delft on Friday to straighten out whether I'm going to take art classes. We'll see. In the meantime I'm on my second double shift of the week (yes, it's Tuesday) and I'm a little tired. I haven't seen the sun since Sunday.
