Scottland
These are the photos from our trip to Scottland. Maggie and I went up to Scottland over New Years 2002-2003. They celebrate the Scottish New Year or "Hogmany" as it is called. This celebration is considered one of the top parties in the world, outclassing the Oktoberfest in Munich among others... Over 100,000 attend and hence, you must have a party "pass" to get in. The entire center of the town is cordoned off by police as they limit attendance for security reasons... No, we were thinking, 100,000 drunk Scotts and foreigners that flew in for a party, at a "street party." Hmmmm, we decided to attend and see what the commotion was all about. In the end, I can only say, Damn, the Scotts can really throw a party!
Maggie and I wanted to do a bit of culture as well so we went up for the whole week to Edinburgh. We stayed at a hotel between town and the airport which ended up a good idea. For transportation, we took the bus in whenever we needed to get to town and it worked out great. From the Marriott, we just took the number 100 bus or the number 32 from in front of the hotel, straight into town (easy and they drivers speak english :-) -almost! )
The first thing we did as you can see form the pictures, is wander about the town and get confortable with it. As we would be surely partaking in fine scotch whiskey New Years eve, we wanted to get familiar with the place so we did not get lost later! Downtown is broken into 3 main areas (at least for us and others on foot!) The first is the castle which is AWESOME and sits up on the hill. The other main areas are the old town and new town. The old town suffered a bad fire a month or two earlier so a portion was unaccessable. The fire destroyed several national landmarks and was quite serious.
Hmmm, where to start. well pictures from the castle I guess! Numbers 006 -25 are all take up at the castle. It has several layers of protection and walls. The castle tour is well worth the money. We thought it VERY expensive at first but it is worth it. Also, get the little recorder device you see around my neck in photo #20. There are numbers throughout and you just enter a number to hear about the artifact/view/device/whatever you are seeing. It is really good and comes in different languages for our intl. friends... The view from the castle across the city is quite lovely, even in bad weather. In the photos, you can also see some shots of in the various halls and outer buildings. The outer buildings include a GREAT BIG HALL that is the national war monument(#18-19)-awesome place. There are still govt. offices in some of the buildings and the entire hill top is quite active. The castle is a must-visit location for those in Edinburgh.
Dinner
As Anton normally writes all the background stories to our trips I decided
that I’ll help him out a little this time and write about our first evening
experience in Edinburgh. We organized a nice traditional “Scottish Dinner &
Ceilidh” on our arrival day, which means basically dinner and traditional
Scottish music and dancing.
As the tables were in groups of 10 we joined a nice bunch of people from
England (we discovered that we actually were the only foreigners in the
whole place, which did not put any stop to our enjoyment and everybody was
nice enough to help us out with the dances, …yes Anton did actually get up
as well and danced along with everybody else, after a couple of whiskey’s it
was easy for all of us).
As we watched the different dances, we knew what country music and line
dancing were partially based on!
Dinner was also pretty good, beside the fact that it included the famous
“Haggis”, to which I recommend a strong stomach! Here is our dinner menu:
first we had“Froth frae Tay Waters” – Salmon mousse on a lemon salad – very good!
“The Chieftain o’the Puddin’Race wi’ champit tatties ‘n’ bashed neeps” –
Haggis, mashed potato and turnip – Anton liked it, so did everybody else, …
I pretty much hated it. Horrible taste to me, which was tried to be covered
up by loads of pepper (just a personal opinion and not to be taken as a
guide line).“Furran Fruits an’ Merkit Marrow” – Chargrilled courgettes and peppers with
saffron risotto – quite nice!“Glayva Trifle and Gowrie Berry Cake” – Trifle and strawberry cheesecake –
very nice!Last but not least “A tassie o’bean bree, wi’ kickshaws” – coffee with
chocolate mints – good finish!After the meal and a lot of talk, came the drinking and dancing lasting
until 1 in the morning, which we felt for the next two days walking, as we
got up early to do some sightseeing.
All in all it was a great experience and a very good preparation for the
coming days in Edinburgh!
Maggie
