Mad dogs.

Mad dogs cafe/restaurant/bar in George Street, Edinburgh. Best BLT sandwich I’ve had in my life and the first decent coffee Tricky has had since leaving Melbourne-we miss coffee maestro, Kevin at Endis in Brunswick Street. Plus, my first taste of Calder’s creamy beer. Its like drinking icecream. A bit like Kilkenny actually.

Highly recommend Mad Dogs. OK?

Monuments.

We wandered up and down Princes Street today. The people, locals and tourists were milling about, all very contented to be in this wonderful city. There are huge grassed areas, park benches, flowers and statues everywhere. At the bottom of Hanover Street, on Princes Street to the left is the Scott Monument. A huge four-pillared gothic kind of building of blackened stone with a pure white statue of Walter Scott, the famous Scottish writer in the centre of it.  Its very impressive. Tricky thinks that back when Edinburgh was being built and developed, all of the builders and architects must have had monument-envy and they took it upon themselves to outdo each other with each new monument. Everywhere you turn there is something new, huge and impressive.

Tricky says in her best Scottish accent “Monument? You call that a monument? I’ll show you a MONUMENT!”.

Walking up hills.

We walked up Raeburn Place into the Edinburgh centre. This really is an incredibly beautiful city. I read today that there are more than 16,000 historically significant buildings in Edinburgh. The houses, in this area at least, are uniformly beautiful, the streets sweeping, cobblestoned (even many of the main streets) and ancient and there are walled or fenced green areas everywhere. All of the shops have old style shop fronts and there seems to be a real effort put into preserving the character of the streetscape.  There is a distinct absence of parking or other street signs- although this took me a while to notice- and even traffic lights seem to blend in. Parking is marked by painted lines on the road.

We walked up some more hills in to the city centre and came up to Princes Street which is the street which roughly divides the old town and the new town. High on a lush, grassed hill above us was Edinburgh Castle. Over that hill is the old town. To our left at the east end of Princes Street was Nelson’s Column and a couple of other big churchy kind of buildings that I haven’t identified yet. The whole scene was a stunning sight against the blue sky but there was no way that we were going to climb that hill today!  We walked a little up Princes Street then back south to find something to eat. Rose Street is a long, shady pedestrian street running parallel to Princes Street and it is packed full of bars, pubs, cafes and restaurants.  I highly recommend it.

We were both pretty tired by now so it was back to the pub -at least this trip is downhill- and to bed early. How long does it take to get over jet-lag?

On the way back, we tried to get into one of the fenced gardens but all of the gates were locked. We could see children playing and people lazing on inviting shaded lawns behind the gates. Damn them! We asked a passerby how we could get in and she told us that these, and most of the other walled or fenced gardens were private and open only to local residents who had a key. She said that the owners of the houses around a private garden would pay a hefty fee for this privilige and the fee would cover the wages of a full-time gardener to maintain the gardens. Although this seemed very unfair at first, I decided in the end it was actually not a bad system and ensured these very old and beautiful gardens would remain forever. But Tricky and I still wanted to jump the fence and go and lie on that manicured grass and maybe spread some leaves around-give that gardener something to do. The free Botanical Gardens for us tomorrow. We are spending way too much money and need some free stuff to do!

Edinburgh.

We flew out of London today heading for Edinburgh. Whilst waiting on the plane, I saw a white streak flash by that was apparently a Concorde taking off. We landed at Edinburgh airport and were whisked in to our hotel by a friendly cabbie who gave us the really basic course in Edinburgh history and culture. This is it.

The part of town we are staying in is Stockbridge. At only a couple of hundred years old. Its in the NEW part of town. The old part of town, where Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace and the universities are- thats the OLD part of town, being a lot older than a mere couple of hundred years.  And the culture part?  There are pubs, lots of them. Because that’s what people do here for fun-go to pubs.

I’m sure there is a lot more to Scottish history than that, and I intend to find out. We arrived at our accomodation. A pub, with a beer garden. I like this place. We shared a pint of Guinness and a bowl of chips then put on our walking boots.

Notting Hill Carnival.

The first day of the Notting Hill Carnival was today. This is apparently the biggest street festival in Europe and attracts 2 million people over its 2 days, all crammed into the fairly posh and fairly small suburb of Notting Hill. Its roots are as a festival of black culture and it started life in the ‘60s as a tiny parade of neighbourhood kids dressed in masquerade and they were soon followed by steel bands and it developed into a street carnival. Back then, the Notting Hill locals were mostly Carribean, Jamaican and other black cultures and it was a very lively, though less well-heeled population. I think I would have liked the Notting Hill of the ‘60s more. However, despite the fact that we both LOVE Afro-Caribbean-Jamaican music, the thought of mingling with over a million people has deterred us.  Especially considering recent years have seen 2 murders and many muggings, stabbings and other assaults. We’ll see Notting Hill Carnival next year when we are more seasoned Londoners.  There is a mini carnival in the street outise now anyway, from the spillover out of Notting Hill.

So, instead of the carnival, we visited Camden markets and mingled with only about half a million people instead. Have never been to such a full-on market. Tricky especially loved the fashion and I had to physically stop her from buying stuff (not really). We’ll be back when we’re more cashed up.