Bagpipes & Kilts

We took a 9 hour bus to Edinburgh, Scotland. Ouch.

However, it was another of the best weekends ever. We arrived on Thursday at 8am and took the bus to find our host.

It would have been quite an uneventful journey had he given me proper directions. Rhys (pronounced "Reese"--it's a Celtic name) had written me very detailed, but inaccurate information on how to get to his house. Therefore, I showed up at the correct house number, but on the wrong street. Of course I confidently rang the bell, and the door was opened by an older gentleman with whom I proceeded to have a very confused conversation, as you can imagine.

To cut short the story, we managed to get ourselves to the actual house and promptly became obsessed with our host, Rhys.
He is originally Welsh but was raised in England and now attends university in Edinburgh. He speaks and dresses like a young Englishman, also speaks Spanish (because he lived there for a bit), and a tiny bit of Welsh. He's also lived in India for about a year and London and Florida...and a number of other places around the globe. I was quite impressed.

He is on the whole 'quintessentially British,' as I told him, and has a penchant for bantering and arguing as every good British citizen does. He noted my sarcastic humour as being unusual for an American, or indeed a non-Brit--and I'm still not sure if I like that about myself.

While he was in class, we took a walk about the city and saw Holyrood Castle, residence of the Queen when in Scotland.


We're pretty sure she was there when we passed by because she isn't in London at the moment and her royal standard was flying!



We passed by Scottish Parliament, which is the most modern, heinous building I've ever seen.
I think my camera actually made it look better than it does in person. Rhys says that the building turned out this way because the original famous architect died with only an impressionist sketch of what he wanted and a group of people tried to interpret for themselves what he was going for.


Next we climbed Arthur's Seat, the extinct volcano which sits, watching over the city. It was an amazing view.

In my opinion, Edinburgh is one of the most beautiful large cities anywhere. It's more like a little-big city. It's very clean and green; it seems like everyone goes running and walking with their dogs.


The next day, we took the train to North Berwick (pronounced "North Barracks") which is a little fishing village on the sea.

We ate at a little shop called the North Berwick Fry which is famous for having the best fish & chips. I think we used up an entire bottle of vinegar. Mmmm.

And the best part that happened was the celidh (pronounced "kay-lee") which is a traditional Scottish dance. It is definitely not a spectator sport. The emcee announces the dance and talks everyone through it and then the band plays and all the newbies stumble their way through it. It was a lot like square dancing, except the men were wearing kilts.

It was intimidating at first because the hardcore dancers took the dance steps really seriously and I didn't want to mess up. Amongst ourselves, we gave names for two particular kilted men who were overly serious about the celigh: "Fascist Scot" and "Braveheart." It was so much fun!

I'll look for pictures of that.