How I spent my Christmas Vacation

Castle day

So it was our final day in Edinburgh and we were back in La Baguette with my father who was feeling much better. Our family takes for-fucking-ever to order anything, but we eventually had food and were on our way to explore the castle.

Right by the castle's entrance is the Tartan Weaving Mill. It's about 95% gift shops and they set it up so you have to go through each little store to get anywhere, but in the center of it all is this big working loom. I wish I'd had the camera because I would have taken pictures because it was extremely cool. I will instead rely on the website's images. There were tons of spools of yarn lined up in a basic pattern on this big spooly griddy contraption (left). These fed through to the loom, where they magically turned into lots of plaid fabric. A guy stood by the loom and occasionally poked at things. And that's how you make tartan.

My mother, having apparently been deprived of gift shops in her youth, feels obligated to spend as much time in gift shops as humanly possible. She got scarves as gifts for people, I got a scarf as a gift for a person, Lynn got kilt socks, and my brother got bored and cranky. We were in the mill for a very, very long time and I felt obligated to touch every pretty wooly and cahsmerey thing in sight, despite my wool allergy. This was extremely dumb of my and my palms continued to itch for a solid hour after I touched my last fuzzy thing.

Also in the immediate vicinity of the castle were all sorts of old government buildings and churches. One church had been turned into an internet cafe, club, and shopping center. Crazy juxtaposition of old and new.

As we wandered around the curvy old streets we saw a sign for the Writers' Museum. Me being me and my mom being published, we had to go in. It turned out to be mainly dedicated to Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Sir Walter Scott. Highlights included a room that, upon entering, started booming a recording of information on Sir Walter Scott. Also notable was the plaster cast of Burns's skull (if I ever become famous and die, I hope someone makes a plaster cast of my skull) and the case of random crap belonging to the subjects of and mentioned in Burns's poetry. There was a parasol and a snuff box from some guy named Johnny next to a quoted reference to it in a poem. Since Toph's full name is Christopher Robert Burns and his dad was named Robert Burns, I had to buy him a post card.

Worth mentioning: there was a guy dressed as William Wallace standing next to a sign that read "Children with leukemia are the true Bravehearts."

After several hours of pre-castle castle-related wanderings, we finally paid our admission and entered the castle itself. While there was no moat, the place where a moat once existed still had to be crossed via entry bridge with big spiky gates. Awesome.

"The castle" is actually more of a giant fort, encompassing many paths, cannons, and buildings, including (but certainly not limited to) the Great Hall, a big impressive church, a small chapel, the Scottish national war museum, the Honours of the Kingdom exhibition, memorials for fallen soldiers, a cemetery for soldiers' dogs, and the Stone of Destiny. The Stone of Destiny (a major Scottish thingy) was apparently in the Westminster Abbey in London until 1996 when it was mysteriously stolen and returned to Scotland in the middle of the night. Reminded me of stealing an opposing school's mascot or something. The soldiers' dogs' cemetery was sad but entertaining, with flowers up against gravestones that read things like "Winkie," "Major," and "Sport." Somewhere along the edge of the castle walls I started having my first heights panic attack in ages. I was trying to stay towards the middle of things and calm myself down when my dad insisted I come over and see something by him near the edge, so I did. It was the soldiers' dogs' cemetery, which I'd seen already, and of course Mr. Panic Attack didn't like me going back to the area with a sheer drop. I can now add Edinburgh Castle to my list of Impressive Places I've Had Panic Attacks. I went and hid out in the chapel for awhile, trying to calm myself down. The chapel had no heating source, but was surprisingly warm considering how fucking freezing it was outside. My brother had clearly had more than enough of the castle, my mom wanted to stop in every gift shop along the way, and my dad wanted to spend six months reading every plaque and staring at every stone. My tendency would have been closer to my fathers, since there was tons to look at, but once the panic attack hit and it was clear everybody else's turkey timers had popped, we headed out. Figured that out involved a lot of steep stairs. Stupid phobia.

Lynn needed to print out her flight information, so she, Mark, and my mom headed to an internet cafe. I wanted to mail my letters and post cards, so my dad joined me in the hunt for a post office. When we met the others at the internet place, they still had much to do so we sat bored and waiting. They'd bought much more time than they needed (something about hour-long blocks and it all being cheap anyway) so I got to spend a few minutes posting to my blog and checking my email.

We were all completely exhausted as we headed back to the hotel for our pre-dinner naps, but I realized I still had people I had to get souvenirs/Chranukah presents for, so I power shopped it at a bookstore and souvenir shop and still made it back in time to completely pass out before dinner.

Our taxi ride to dinner was long and winding thanks to the "torch parade" we didn't know about. We actually got to catch a glimpse of what appeared to be tons of people walking through the streets carrying torches (think: every torch-bearing mob scene ever, but calmer) and then heard the fireworks going off from inside the restaurant. Poor timing on our parts, but we were all getting along quite nicely and eating more fabulous food at a Frenchy restaurant and playing "categories," which is very much like the alphabet game but without having to start each item with consecutive letters of the alphabet and without drinking. It would actually make an excellent drinking game in different company.

Back at our hotel Lynn spent approximately 6 months packing. I had my big teal backpacking backpack, so my packing was three minutes of cramming everything down the big squishy cylinder. I couldn't sleep so I wrote a little in my journal and read some of the Kafka short stories my sister bought in Rome by the light of my Christmas cracker flashlight. I felt completely brilliant when I came up with a way of keeping it lit without having to squeeze it constantly (several 5 pence pieces and a hair rubberband). I eventually dozed off for the last time in Scotland.

posted by Jill @ Thursday, December 29, 2005