How I spent my Christmas Vacation

Shopping and eating in Edinburgh

The next morning my dad was completely out of commission. Terrible vertigo and barfiness. Across the street from our hotel were three French-ish sandwichy shops. We wandered into one of them (La Baguette) to get my dad some tea and ourselves breakfast. I had a brie morning roll, which was a small round whole grain (like, chunks of oats and other grains) roll with big slices of brie on it. They had about a bazillion different options and as we stood there trying to decide the guy behind the counter asked in his thick Scottish brogue, "Spoiled for choice?" Something about the phrase with the accent was just perfect.
We decided to move seeing the castle to the next day and went off to do things he wouldn't mind missing, which quickly became shopping shopping and more shopping. The post-Christmas sales were plentiful. Mark was still in willing-to-buy-fashionable-clothing mode, so we mostly looked for him, though we did spend well over an hour in Zara. Zara is a store I loved when I spent the summer in Vienna and apparently Lynn loved this past semester in Rome. I got a really cute sweater in an intense teal green that I like very much. We also saw the first 10,000 of what was to be 83 bazillion Scottish scarves. Apparently the reason for all the sheep-fucking is to make the cashmere softer and plaidier. Lynn had to try on 93% of the hats. Obviously. My mom and brother went back to the hotel to check on my father, while my sister and I were supposed to meet them after we went to the drug store to look for single serving face masks. Unfortunately, I wasn't wearing the smartest shoes so my sister was walking in front of me, seemingly leading the way. I guess I'd forgotten who my sister was, because I assumed she was actually leading the way and knew where she was going. After several blocks of just trying to keep up I noticed we were going the wrong way and I hadn't paid attention to how we'd gotten there. My sister had been walking and assumed I'd tell her if she went the wrong way. Oops. Using the castle as a landmark I got us what I thought was back on track, but I wasn't sure so we tried asking someone. He didn't know where the Sheraton was, but I remembered there was a pub across the street called Shakespeare's and, according to Zach, all UK residents are alcoholics, so I asked if he knew where the pub was. This he did, though he wasn't sure how to get there, but he knew the street it was on and described its position in relation to a large clock. Zach, you were right. Well, we still didn't know for sure how to get back and I'm much more confident if I have a map, so we went into a convenience store and spent a pound and a half on a map of Edinburgh. I found our location and where we needed to go, at which point I realized we were half a block from where I would have known exactly where we were and should be going, anyway. Figures. At any rate, we made it back to the hotel not too late and the drug store we went to didn't even have face masks.

My dad was feeling sufficiently better to come with us for an afternoon of--what else--shopping! so we went to the nicer streets and wandered around and looked at more cashmere and wool. We also stumbled upon an outdoor market with neat little booths selling jewelry, mulled cider, cheese, and (my favorite) Scottish children's books. I'd been looking in the US for a book of plays of an appropriate reading level for my students, but Amazon and bookstores kept failing me. Random stand in Edinburgh, on the other hand, had a perfect book of fairy tales in play format with a CD of them being read. 10 pounds well spent.

Before heading back to the hotel for naps, my siblings and I split off from my parents and went to a different drug store in search of the single-serving facial masks and voila! an entire section. We chose six: two relaxing, two deep-cleaning, and two peel-off exfoliating. I love those things.



Dinner. My dad had asked the concierge at the hotel to recommend a Scottish restaurant. My stomach was finally all better and wanted some real food, but we all knew it was possible we'd be eating bread and staring at blood pudding and going for munchies late that night. Oh how wrong we were. The menu had two pages to it: one with four appetizers and four entrees that made up the prix fixe menu (18 pounds) and the other had about six appetizers and entrees that could be chosen individually with individual prices. Pheasant, wood pigeon, venison, salmon herring and hare were the Scottier options with a few vegetarian dishes, steak, chicken, and assorted fish making up the rest of the menu. I had the venison, and it was seriously the best thing I ate the entire trip. It was incredible. Like a really fine, tender beef with a sauce that tasted like Jesus. I also had a Hoegaarden for the first time since my Maastricht/Vienna summer. I know it's not Scottish, but it's delicious. The general atmostphere was much more what I'd expected. It was dark and stone and kind of dank and castle-like. I sat next to the radiator, which was wonderful because it was motherfuckingcoldout. When we were more than sufficiently stuffed, we ordered dessert. My brother was having a moment (being 16 is a real piece of shit) and didn't help eat the dessert, so I completely overstuffed myself beyond reason.

After dinner we all walked back to the hotel. Lynn and I had both promised Mark we'd go out with him, but I was uncomfortably full and too damn lazy to go anywhere farther than Shakespeare's, so Shakespeare's it was. Lynn and I each got a pint of Tennents because it was Scottish and on tap. Verdict: not very good. We sat around and bonded like good siblings. Mark doesn't drink for somewhat medical reasons (it interferes with his crack habit) but he posed with the pint anyway and was by far the goofiest. I just wanted to go lay down and sleep from overstuffedness (beer is heavy, especially in an already full tummy), so once our single pints were drained, we waddled back to the hotel. Mark had the serious munchies (again, I point out he had consumed no altering substances) and he and Lynn went looking for food downstairs but were up only minutes after me as everything was closed except 24-hour room service. The boy ordered an enormous and expensive club sandwich that seemed to be making him very happy as I passed out in my food-induced coma for the night.

posted by Jill @ Wednesday, December 28, 2005