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fivecats
Part Two: Edinburgh to Edinburgh
It’s good to have a goal, a destination in mind, when you set out. Even if you accept that some time will be spent in aimless wandering as you simply enjoy the journey, having that Place of Intention is helpful.
Our goal for Day Two was simple: to go to The Museum of Childhood in Edinburgh.
On the small tourist’s map of Edinburgh that we had I was able to locate the museum. It was a long, but simple walk back into Edinburgh proper, past the Waverly Place Train Station, go a few blocks further, and then turn onto High Street. Simple enough.
Its photo-intensive, but if you'd care to come along,
We retraced the ‘proper’ route from the night before to get into town. We did this for several reasons, all photographic. One of the reasons was for this old church (now a Christian Centre Ministries) at Dean’s Bridge. It was completely unlit at night but still exuded the dark, dirty outer weathering of the ages during the daylight.
Those of you who followed my entry on the events of Christmas Day of last year may remember my incensed outrage at the notion of plastic (plastic!) faux-spikes along the top of a residence wall nearby Hyde Park. Imagine my pleasure, then, at finding a series of small but real spikes along the Dean Bridge!
(Okay, so they weren’t exactly filed down to sharp, flesh-ripping points, but at least they were real iron)
Besides, they’re likely only there to keep foolish people from sitting on the side of the bridge and falling to their deaths. (It really is one heckuva drop)
The other big reason was this house. At the closer-to-town side of Deans Bridge is a tiny, unassuming house that looks like it’s been there since forever. The round turret facing the bridge extends down to the foundation ground of the bridge, a good four or five storys past the level of the bridge, giving it a wonderful high fantasy story feel to it.
The front is just as quiet, yet impressive. The wooden door is on the smallish side, but looks very sturdy. The second floor has a small wooden door for a window and a stone garden box with the remnants of the summer’s flowers still holding out against the cold and the winds.
I fell in love with the place, but lacked the courage to knock on the door and beg for a tour.
We have this problem with old churches and cathedrals: we find it difficult to just walk by them. Instead, we feel compelled to go inside, regardless of where or when.
I find in them a long-standing sense of history, the kind we simply do not have in the US. And while I’m far more into the Spiritual than I am into the Religious, I have a respect for the craftsmanship, the architecture and the overall feelings of stillness that so much prayer throughout the centuries can instill in a building.
St. Johns is situated to the edge of the major shopping district that makes up the Princes Street border of the “new” section of town. It faces a major hotel that has taken over a huge old manor house and a building that’s being renovated and yet still sports a three story banner advertising “Edinburgh’s Newest Nightclub” located on the ground floor.
All of those are likely to continue changing over the years. St. Johns will remain St. Johns, standing silent vigil.
Inside the parish was putting on a Christmas Card Sale for Worthy Causes. I’m not sure how many worthy causes there are in the greater Edinburgh area, but at well over 100 of them have put out Christmas cards as fundraisers.
We didn’t stay long, choosing to take a quick look at the rest of the grounds instead. At the far side of the building stood an interesting sign, one that reminded me of something
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ruralrob might find on one of his journeys into Toronto.
So, on to the Museum of Childhood, then.
Down past the Hogmanay, turn right past the train station and then High Street should be right… no, it’s not the next road. And it’s not the next road, either. That road was curving to the right and sloping upward at an annoyingly steep angle. I decided we should, instead, take one of the many Closes (steep, staired alleyways) up to the next road. For some reason, stairs seemed less severe than the slope of the road.
By the time the last of the steps were in sight we had slowed down considerably. The stonework of the buildings on either side of us had become something we felt needed to be studied and appreciated, you understand. In detail.
Behind us I could hear the happy, trotting steps of someone prancing up stairs. As he passed us I said, “All right, all right. No need to show off so much. You’ll be old one day soon enough, too.”
He turned and waved. As he continued on he gave a cheery, "I'm getting old, too!" and was gone.
Yeah, I thought. But I'll bet you never appreciate this stonework this well.
At the top of the stairs we did, indeed, find High Street. I took a guess and headed us right, up the street.
Where we didn’t find it.
Instead, we continued climbing, knowing that the Edinburgh Castle was at the top of the hill and, for me, that was going to be good enough.
But first, there was St. Giles.
St. Giles has a long history. Records show a church in Edinburgh dating as far back as 854. It wasn't until 1243, however, that the church was formally dedicated. The building looks as though it's seen all of that history, along with considerable reconstruction starting back in the 1800s.
It's one of those grand old buildings that inspires silence and reverence. And photographs.
And the lighting of candles.
Part of the idea behind going ahead with this trip was to help us to work through part of the grieving process over the loss of The Bear. As well as being with us on our return for Christmas, The Bear was very much in our hearts and minds along much of the trip.
It should come as no surprise that the hole in my heart left from his death still hasn't healed. I don't expect it ever will -- and that's okay. It's all part of this life, love and death process we all are a part of. Still, I am working to learn to work around that hole and not to fall in and be consumed by the emptiness that I feel is there right now. Part of honoring that gift and acceptance of the missing part of me was to light candles for The Bear when we were in a church that had candles that could be lit in memory and/or prayer for someone.
It helped each time we did so.
One reason for turning to the right on High Street was that I knew at the end of the street we'd come to Edinburgh Castle. The castle dominates much of the view from Downtown (i.e. Tourist Area) Edinburgh and its presence tended to draw us toward it each time we saw it.
High Street ends with a cluster of large tourist trap shops and a gate for the castle's Medieval Asphalt Parking Lot. ("Robert the Bruce once painted these white divider lines himself!") We continued trudging up to the castle gates until we saw that the admission charge was £11 ($22+) per person. We both laughed at the idea and decided we'd wait to see the inside of the castle whenever The Amazing Race decides to have a Roadblock there.
(It really would be a great place for The Race to go to. The parking lot opens 30 minutes before the castle does, so it would be a great bunching-up point with a bit of humour thrown in)
It really is an impressive structure, wonderfully old and battle-worn.
Although we still don't know why the Scottish flag isn't flying over the castle...
Well, since up the hill didn't get us to the Museum of Childhood, maybe down the hill would. And since we were tired from the long uphill climb, going with the gravitational pull for a while sounded like a very good idea.
Edinburgh's High Street, also known as "The Royal Mile", is about as touristy as they come. In fact, think of it as Edinburgh's Boardwalk and you'll get the idea -- only with Scotland-themed souvenirs and a Scotch Whiskey Experience Center nearby the castle to put things into perspective. We walked past countless tourist traps all selling more or less the same thing (I lost count of the number of places we saw in Scotland selling the bath towel with a tartan and drover sporran printed on the front and sold as an "Instant Kilt!"), past all of the standard US chains of hotels, expensive restaurants and the occasional whiskey and spirits shop (again, keeping things in perspective).
Finally, after getting back to the place where we arrived onto High Street, I asked someone on the street if they knew where the Museum of Childhood was.
They pointed to a building a quarter of the way down the block. We'd been a stone's throw away from it at the start.
The front of the Museum of Childhood was, as I feared it would be, a small toy and gift shop. I was really hoping this was going to be something less than just another excuse to sell more unnecessary plastic items to the tourists, but I wasn't so sure. We dashed past the shelves of Made In China plastic-wrapped future rubbish bin occupants and headed into the museum proper.
I'd like to say the museum was a wonderful tribute to all of those things we'd loved and cherished about childhood. Instead, about the best I can say is that the name really should have been The Museum of Scottish Childhood (it is in an international tourist area, after all) and while most of what we saw there could have easily filled a pixellated stack of eBay pages, none of the items on display were for sale. There were some items that we saw that we recognized from our US childhoods, but we obviously weren't getting into it as much as some of the older women walking around who spoke with thick brogues.
That and admission was free.
From where Bonn is sitting in the picture above she's able to look out and see the view from the picture at the top of this page.
As Edinburgh's native son Robert Lewis Stevenson once said, "It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive."
We ended up finding some great fish & chips at a small hole-in-the-wall place and exploring a few other old churches. One church, St. John's was lit only by a few candles on the inside. It was lovely, but not very suitable for photographs.
Next time: "Are you sure you want to go to Perth?"
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 03:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 03:13 am (UTC)actually edinburgh was a great town, one that we knew we weren't going to be able to do justice to in just four days (at two days each). on the second two-day span we decided we really needed to have a local show us around, taking us to the best of non-touristy edinburgh.
personally, this entry peaks on the first image (intentionally posted with great hugeness) and then goes slowly downhill from there. :)
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Date: 2008-01-03 03:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 03:37 am (UTC)edinburgh isn't too dissimilar from our weather here outside of raleighwood. it's a bit colder, but not overly so. we were, for instance, able to make the 3 mile hike into town from our hotel without getting overly cold.
loch rannoch, where the timeshare is, on the other hand, had the cold plus stronger winds plus the humidity from the loch. we found ourselves missing the relative warmth of edinburgh during the coldest of the rannoch days.
mary shouldn't have been so picky. i hear she lost her head over it...
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i remember fondly the haggis of my youth
Date: 2008-01-03 05:41 am (UTC)And i totally thought the same thing when I saw the prism poster shot!
Re: i remember fondly the haggis of my youth
Date: 2008-01-03 12:38 pm (UTC)i can't imagine whoever created the st. john's interfaith week poster didn't have dark side of the moon in mind when they were working on it. that album cover is such a cultural icon.
still, it makes for a pretty strange image.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 09:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 03:20 pm (UTC)(well, i really like the first image. the others all have tonal problems that still bother me)
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Date: 2008-01-03 11:18 am (UTC)ah, I love the way the slopes fall away beside the bridges in Edinburgh, with the different levels of houses and flats dropping away beneath. I think I'm thinking of the North bridge, where a similar thing occurs to the Dean bridge here. It makes the city feel a bit like an Escher model, with all the different runnels and passageways going on at other levels under your feet. : )
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Date: 2008-01-03 03:17 pm (UTC)looking at the rounded turret of the house by Deans Bridge i could just imagine going from the front door on the bridge level and doing down through the rooms to the river level five stories below. what an incredible place (and an incredible view!).
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Date: 2008-01-03 12:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 03:15 pm (UTC)also, i refused to take pictures of the boardwalk touristy stuff. even when i'm in a very kitchy mood, most of it is the visual equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard.
i'd really like to find a local who would be willing to take us around to the not-so-touristy areas of the city. i'm guessing Edinburgh is even more fascinating than we found it to be.
(of course, on the flight back home we were seated with a family of five from Edinburgh. they were all on their way to disneyworld for christmas...)
the first image took quite a bit of post-processing to get just right. i must admit, it's one of my favorites from the entire trip.
the shot of bonn works, in part, i think, due to those leaflets in the pews. they continue with the visual vanishing point lines the sides of the pews do, but with a different colour and a slight skewed angle from one another.
(bonn doesn't like it because she's in the picture) :)
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 03:41 pm (UTC)i think the stevenson quote (one i've incorrectly attributed to mark vonnegut in the past) says a lot about my approach to these entries as well. last year, when i was traveling out of the country for the first time, my mind was on overdrive with all of the new sensory input. i was able to put a lot of my thoughts and questions down in (what i thought, at least) was an amusing way. this time around the writing feels a bit more forced and i'm not amusing myself so much with what i'm writing.
personally, i blame it all on my decision (against my better judgement, mind you) to read Pete MacCarthy's two books (MacCarthy's Bar and The Road to MacCarthy) while i was in the UK. as i feared, this led to me reading about adventures instead of having them myself.
we're thinking of expanding the number of places we travel hopefully to this year. we may forego the trip to Kinnloch Rannoch and trade our timeshare week in for one elsewhere in the world. amsterdam has been suggested by the kids and we may try to do another family vacation this december. who knows?
as for allowing you to accompany us, it's my pleasure. i'm glad you enjoyed it!
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Date: 2008-01-03 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 10:11 pm (UTC)it's also the kind of stuff i love to read, so to that extent i'm also writing it for myself.
and it's a good excuse to take pictures everywhere i go.
we're already planning a busy Spring full of shows. this means we might even have some spare money at some point for a trip somewhere else. i'm hoping to get to nanookville in the next year or so (after
are any of your travels bringing you back to NC anytime this year?
and since you mentioned italy -- the Eat of Eat Pray Love -- i'll go ahead and ask: what was it about the book that you found so powerful and moving? (i'll let you know my thoughts after i read yours)
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Date: 2008-01-03 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 06:41 pm (UTC)thanks for the words of encouragement. as always, they mean a lot.
you'll get a thank-you mention in my first travel narratives book. :)
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Date: 2008-01-03 08:25 pm (UTC)Self-criticism comes when you know you have the capability, and the writing skill, and you imagine you're not living up to either. Perhaps you should turn that critical eye away for a later-stage editing process, and let the artist in you focus on the positives--that you definitely have the capability and the skill.
P.S. You worry too much.
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Date: 2008-01-03 10:03 pm (UTC)"you imagine you're not living up to either" definitely describes it.
i'll work on focusing on the positives and save the self-loathing until the editing phase. :)
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Date: 2008-01-04 04:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-04 04:32 am (UTC)i'm rather partial to the first one, myself.
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Date: 2008-01-08 01:31 pm (UTC)Those ceilings just take my breath away.
Dean's Bridge House is unusual, must be a remnant from the times? when they had actual houses lining many of the bridges in the UK.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-08 10:30 pm (UTC)the deans bridge house looks incredibly old - just the small size of the rooms in that turret remind me of olden times when people were smaller as well.
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