Saturday dawned gray and it didn’t take long to start raining. We got the all-day bus pass, thinking we might want to ride into town, and out a couple of times. The bus dropped us on Princes Street, and we navigated by viewing the castle. Between the visible and distinctive spires and domes of castles and churches, plus my picture map, we did pretty well keeping ourselves oriented.
We went down into the castle gardens, and made our way over to a volleyball game that was going on, in a sand court. The group was none other than the Scottish Volleyball Association, and it was a playoff between a couple of co-ed teams. Eric took some pictures, because our eldest daughter had told us to find her a hot Scotsman. One that could play volleyball, we felt, would suit even better.
We worked our way around the castle, which is built high upon cliffs. During “the ’45,” the Scots chased the English as far as Edinburgh, where Cumberland holed up in the castle, so in a way, that fortress (and Charles Stuart’s greed) was the downfall of the Scotts.
Finding ourselves at the top of “The Royal Mile,” we started working our way through the shops. There is a lot of schlocky stuff in those shops, as well as some nice things, and we didn’t make it all the way down to Holyrood House, because our agenda was to try and navigate laterally to the Grassmarket, an area which had been recommended by Brown.
We did see a couple of pipers on the Royal Mile, which made my day. I would very much have liked to see a whole troop of them, but alas, it was not to be.
We cut over to the Grassmarket by way of the Cowsgate. The Grassmarket is a nice kind of plaza, filled with pubs. One of them was called Maggie Dickson’s. The Grassmarket has been a market area for centuries, but also was a place of execution (by hanging). Maggie was hanged for her part in a murder, and then revived when she was accidentally dropped after being taken down. She recovered fully, living our her life with the moniker of “Half-Hangit Maggie.”
The place we chose for lunch was “The Last Drop,” which, contrary to what one might think, doesn’t allude to drink, but the noose. The signs in the pub said that it still maintains its original layout and décor. At the end of lunch (haggis, with neeps and tatties), Steph stated that she had had enough sightseeing in the rain, and would go back to the hotel at the earliest opportunity. We got a recommendation from our waitress for a pub where local musicians come every night to play. It was called Sandy Bell’s.
We wandered down a couple more streets in Eric’s quest to find wind-up toys, but never found one. And it was pretty miserable in the rain, so after visiting one final schlock store in a mall, we got Steph headed back toward the bus, and attempted to find a pub with live music.
It seemed that Sandy Bell’s was about the only one, but it was a long walk from where we were, so we took a cab. It was a £5 well spent, being a short drive, but it would have been a long, wet walk for two already soggy people.
Sandy Bell’s was the highlight of our visit to Edinburgh. Another one of a kind place, it only serves drinks and “crisps” – no food. When we came in, a trio was playing, seated at a table near the back – a fiddle, mandolin, and bass. But as they were playing, a man wearing a kilt and carrying a guitar came in and struck up a conversation with another gentleman at the bar.
“Ye’re lookin’ fine today.”
“Aye, ye should try it sometime.”
“Och, ma legs’re too skinny.”
Eric asked the man in the kilt if he could take my picture with him, and the response was sure, and that he could take as many others as he wanted, while they were playing.
Brian (the kilt-wearing man) ended up playing with John (the fiddler) and Freddy, who had been playing bass with the previous group. We got to talk with them a lot, and found that only one of them (John) plays music professionally, and he travels around the world with it. His group has played at Wolf Trap before, and was coming back to the States that fall. We gave him our contact info, in hopes that we would hear from him.
We stayed there for quite a while, listening and visiting, having a couple of the local brews, and then buying the band a round, before finally leaving.
It was a long walk back to Prince’s Street and a late night, but time and effort well spent. We felt that we had ended our trip to Scotland on a good note (no pun intended).
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