SCOTLAND HONEYMOON PART 1

I am now married. I went to Scotland on honeymoon. There, that's the short version.

Long version: This will be split into two posts because we took upwards of 700 pictures and it's too big for one thing, and many of those photos were taken at 1 location, the highlight of the trip. So this post will be mostly about the cities and everything not on Skye. The trip was a week. We spent the first and last day and a half in Edinburgh, one half day in Glasgow, One half day in St. Andrews, and the rest of it in the Highlands.

EDINBURGH, DAY 1

Edinburgh Castle
After taking the red-eye overnight from Newark the day before, we got into Edinburgh with no real sleep at 7am. Not a great start and we were both wiped. We took a taxi from the airport to our AirBnB for the night, but we were technically unable to check in before 3pm. luckily, we ran into a member of the building office who offered us the storage closet to store our luggage so we wouldn't have to drag it around all day. This man, along with our delightful cabbie, started a trend of highlighting how incredibly nice the Scots are as people. They were all wonderful people.

After dropping our stuff off, we walked up the hill in Old Town Edinburgh onto the Royal Mile, the line of ancient shops and stuff leading up to Edinburgh castle. Then we went to the castle itself. Edinburgh castle is a big, elaborate fortress mini-city on top the remains of a volcano in the middle of the city. It's a big tourist spot, and it's pretty cool. We spent several hours wandering around there, seeing the different sights like the 1 o'clock gun (Which fired every day at 1 to inform people in the harbor of the time, and now does so as tradition). We went and saw the Scottish Crown Jewels and the Stone of Destiny, which sadly we were not allowed to take pictures of.

Edinburgh Castle entrance

View from the battlements to Calton Hill

The sign for the 1 o'clock gun

The One O'Clock Gun

Edinburgh from the Castle's west side

Foogs's gate to the upper castle

A small dog cemetery on a ledge in the castle

Mon's Meg, a huge cannon

Aiming at the Scott Monument

What remains of a tower named for one of the King Davids

A creepy face on a display in David's Tower

Margaret is tired of this shit

the great hall

War memorial

Inside the prison

The stadium kind of ruins the castle

Keeley took this picture if it wasn't obvious

After Edinburgh Castle we went to Rose Street across the valley to eat lunch. Rose street is a cute pedestrian only street behind Princes Street filled with pubs. So many pubs. Europe must have something like 3 pubs per block required by law. We ate lunch on Rose street and I tried Haggis for the first time. It was okay. A little too heavy for me but it tasted fine. I had it with Neeps and Tatties (Mashed Turnips and Mashed potatoes)

Haggis, Neeps and Tatties

Rose Street

The Scott Monument

The top of a neat marble staircase in Old Town

The Royal Mile

Edinburgh Castle from Princes Street

Then we could finally check into our place so we went back and crashed for a while. I watched english TV, delighting in a Channel called "Dave" (Basically just Spike TV) and a dedicated "Horror" channel (basically just Syfy). Then we went to a traditional Scottish pub for dinner and I got the Fish and Chips. I have decided that Fish and Chips are largely disappointing. It's so bland.

Then we slept.

Dave watches Dave

Our place for the night

The next morning we got tea and stuff, and thus began my week-long quest to drink lots of tea, because Scottish Breakfast Tea is good and way better than hot coffee, which I've always disliked.

breakfast

After Tea, we got on a train and went west to Glasgow from Waverley Station.

Glasgow
We got into Glasgow and the difference between Edinburgh and Glasgow was easily apparent. Edinburgh is a tourist old english city. Glasgow is where people actually lived and worked. It was a little dirtier, more modern, and felt like a traditional city compared to Edinburgh, which was very pretty and neat but felt foofy and a little over-presented. The accents were tougher to understand and sounded less fancy. That said, I loved it. I felt like if I didn't have to talk and didn't wear my camera around, I could have blended right in.

George's Square

George's Square

Edinburgh Waverley

The train

Glasgow still had incredible old buildings though, and our quest that afternoon after checking into the hotel was the Kelvingrove museum, an Art and History museum in a very old building. Glasgow museums are free, which made it all the cooler. We took the subway to the museum and spent the next several hours exploring it. One wing was dedicated to history, the other art. They had an original Salvador Dali painting there. They had one room full of floating heads. Art is weird.

Kelvingrove

Shoe Dogs

The Dali

After the museum we had some local donuts and I drank SCOTTISH NATIONAL TREASURE IRN BRU. Irn Bru is an orange colored soda made in Scotland and has the distinction of being a local soda that manages to genuinely compete with Coke. It's considered a national treasure by some and terrible by others. It's okay. It tastes like bubblegum. That sort of weird bubblegum flavor you get in "bubblegum" flavored things, and the way those crappy penny bubblegums you'd get at Halloween would taste. It's disorienting at first because it looks like it will taste like Orange fanta, but it very much doesn't.

After Kelvingrove we went back to the city center and had some pizza dinner at PAESANO pizza, which was delicious. Then we went and explored a nearby Gothic cathedral that was older than dirt and straight out of gothic horror movies. Behind that was the Glasgow Necropolis, a spooky and awesome old cemetery on a hill.

The next day the fun would begin.

SKYE AND THE HIGHLANDS

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday will be covered in the next post, as they are more traditional Dave and Keeley adventures. All you need to know is that on Sunday we drove back down from Inverness towards St. Andrews and Edinburgh.

DALWHINNIE AND ST. ANDREWS

On our way back to civilization, we both decided that we had finally recovered from our Bachelor/Ette parties to sample some Whisky from a Scotland distillery. After all, Whiskey is something Scotland does best. We stopped at Dalwhinnie for a brief time to sample some fine booze. They served it to us with a cup of Hot Chocolate. We were supposed to take a drink, then chase it with some coco. I don't drink Whiskey, I had no idea this was a thing, but it was delicious. For whiskey at least. I'm not a hard liquor drinker but this was easily the best whiskey I've had.

St. Andrews was a city Keeley wanted to see more than I did. It ended up being cool, but frightfully busy. It reminded me of a much, much older version of Annapolis. We walked around the ruins of the old St. Andrews cathedral, which was pretty neat. Then we walked through the old castle, which was pretty creepy. They had an ancient dungeon and a claustrophobic mine underneath it. Then we just cruised the streets, got some pub dinner and ice cream before driving back to Edinburgh.

Keeley in the cathedral ruins entrance

Dude was money

St. Andrews Castle remains

Castle grounds on the inside

Entrance to the bottle dungeon

Inside the kitchen

Butts Wynd

A Strange local restaurant

However, before I move on, I have to mention Butts Wynd. A wynd in britian means small side street. It's obviously pronounced differently. But still. Butts Wynd. Amazing. I take a stroll down Butts Wynd whenever I go to Chipotle.

EDINBURGH, AGAIN

This time we now had a full evening, a nice hotel, and a leisurely day to explore some more Edinburgh. On Sunday night we quested to find a bar playing the NFL games of week 1, and after 30 minutes of wandering found a neat place under the Royal Mile that was playing the Redzone channel to a small cluster of Amerians searching for asylum. Halfway through the game most of the TVs changed to the US Open. The NFL is never going to have a real presence here. On top of that I was watching afternoon games late at night. The Giants/Cowboys game was on at 4:30 on the East Coast, but it started at 9:30 here and ended at 1am. I think this is the biggest hurdle to fandom in the UK. Our primetime games are simply unwatchable on that time frame.

The next day we did lots of walking and fun. We started with a traditional Scottish breakfast, which was delicious. We then moved onto climbing the Scott Monument, which is a weird spire tower in downtown and probably the most Gothic thing ever made.

Believe it or not there are stairs to the top of that skinny thing. Tiny, cramped spiral stairs all the way to the top. If you are overweight or have any sort of claustrophobia, fear of heights, or get dizzy easily, stay the hell away. Why I say dizzy people should steer clear is the stairs. The stairs are a tight spiral for over 250 steps and because of the tight angle (2-3 steps is a 90 degree turn) it feels like the stairs go up or down in circles forever and you get discombobulated.

280 steps like this

Arthur's Seat from the Scott Monument

Douchebag Selfie

Royal Mile and the Castle

There is a staircase in this pillar

Weeeeeee!

The view is great though.

After Scott, we walked up Calton Hill, a nearby park behind our hotel with a great view of the city and several more monuments.

Calton Hill

Suggestion

Nelson Scott Monument

Arthur's seat

Then we did a proper Afternoon Tea. As in full blown afternoon tea. Tea, appetizers, munchies, harp playing, fancy people, cucumber sandwiches, and desert too sweet to eat without instant cavities. It was very fancy stuff.

Then, with our bellies full, we stuck on our rough clothes and hiked to the top of Arthur's Seat in Holyrood park. The remains of another Volcano just like Edinburgh castle, Arthur's seat is a massive city park filled with trails and hidden pathways over the old rocks. The view from the top at sunset was grand. On one side there was the remains of an ancient church built no later than the 1600's.

Castle

A scary movie

Windy up here

Our final adventure complete, we settled in and flew out the next day.

Scottish Breakfast

Signs in Scotland are funny

RANDOM IMPRESSIONS

-Anything to do with driving I will cover in the next post.

-People are extremely nice. Every cabbie was a delight to chat with, every stranger a friendly sort. I couldn't believe how friendly people were

-The scottish accent could get pretty thick sometimes but overall was fine. The way our first cabbie said "Are you going Nessie Spotting?" almost made me squeal with glee.  That said, hearing small children casually talk in a British accent is surreal as hell.

-Everything felt extremely familiar and yet completely different. The major differences (Like the wrong side driving) are less notable and easier to adjust to than the small ones you'd never consider, like how the traffic crossings worked. In the US, people usually get the walk signal when traffic is moving the same way as them. In Scotland, traffic at a stop completes an entire circuit, and then all the walk signals go on at the same time and people just cross the intersection at whatever angle they want. They also don't get a warning hand flashing down the seconds till they can't walk, the walk sign just vanishes and you better get out of the road.

-Airport Security at Edinburgh was so fast I've never experienced anything like it, and it really highlights how paranoid and terrible America and the TSA are. I feel bad for any Scot who visits America for the first time and assumes the airports work the same way and show up too late to reach the plane.

-Everyone listens to electronic music. Everywhere. EDM played in every bar, pub, cafe, restaurant..it was weird. It was as frequent there as Country Music would be in the south.

-Brits love their Queues. They have waiting in line down to a science.

-A bartender on the way to Skye didn't realize Coors Light was American Piss beer, it was weird explaining it to him.

-Their pints of beer are much bigger than ours

-Potato Scones are basically pancakes, not the biscuit thing I thought they would be.

-The Fashion is different. I saw a lot of midriff shirts on the women. That died in the 90's here.

-So many more Mercedes cars. Mercedes everything. Trucks, vans, ambulances. I didn't realize Mercedes made half of these cars.

-Much fewer Japanese vehicles.

-Steps and hidden alleys everywhere, most with Pubs in them.

-Windy as hell oh my god is Scotland windy. Is this how they came up with Gale (Gael) force winds?

-Everything is older than my home country and it's weird now seeing "old" American stuff and realizing how young it is.

-I wish we did dollar coins, but everything less than a dollar is still sort of a pointless coin.

Overall, I loved it there, and would gladly go back.