Edinburgh and Lothians

Friday morning I took the train to Edinburgh and met up with Ron and Rebecca Lascoe at their castle hotel in Bonnyrigg.  As they are like my second set of parents it was really nice to see them and have some familiar faces and voices.  They had rented a car and we drove around much of the countryside in the area known as The Borders, it borders with England.  Our first stop was Rosslyn Chapel of DaVinci Code fame.  This little gem of a church has become quite famous over the years especially since the DaVinci Code movie.  Although it is undergoing quite a bit of renovation the stone work throughout was quite beautiful with a lot of intricately carved figures and designs, as well as one of only two carvings in the world of an angel playing bagpipes!  From there we drove through the town of Peebles and walked around a bit.  It is a quaint little town with some shops and a river with great country views.  Lots of sheep grazing and beautiful rolling hills.  Afterward, we journeyed to Melrose where we toured the ruins of the Melrose Abbey.  Once one of the richest Abbeys in Scotland, its location on the border made it prone to attacks from English kings.  The ruins were still beautiful with the mysterious air of broken down buildings.  We drove along from their through more beautiful countryside, passing by a castle and some windy cobblestone roads through to England before heading back up to Edinburgh.  We stopped briefly at the fishing town of St. Abbs which is located right on the coast of the North Sea.  It was cold and windy but interesting to see the harbor looking out to the sea and imagining all the fisherman leaving early in the morning for their daily work.  The views were spectacular and I really got the feeling of being on an island, something that you don't get when you're in the midst of a large city.

I left the Lascoes in Edinburgh and stayed with a MBA student from India for the weekend.  Since he has never been to America and I have never been to India we had a great cultural exchange learning about each other's countries and we made good conversation late into the night.  I was also the first Jew he met and we talked about religion for a while.  He grew up in a religion called Jainism, which I have read about in a book before and didn't believe was real because of all of their extreme customs.  He doesn't practice most of their traditions but generally it is a religion based on non-violence toward living things, which some followers take to the most extreme measures imaginable (i.e. self inflicted pain, long term fasting, covering their mouths and not wearing shoes to reduce harm to tiny organisms).  Saturday night he cooked traditional Indian lentil stew (Dal) and rice and he reminded me that in India they don't use utensils so we ate with our hands! It was a fun cultural experience and overall a very refreshing interaction for me.

Saturday and Sunday during the day I did a lot of walking around Edinburgh's new and old town.  There is a company that offers free walking tours so I took one and got the full taste of Edinburgh's cultural history as well as general Scottish history.  There are a lot of sordid stories of murder and crime as well as the occasional pleasant story about a dog.  We learned about the real life Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde that Robert Louis Stevenson based his story on and saw the remaining homes of the city's prominent figures.  After the walking tour I went to Edinburgh castle which is one of Scotland's most popular tourist sites, and even towards the end of tourist season was quite busy.  Here, I continued to learn about Scottish history which mainly consists of frequent battles with the English and land constantly changing hands.  There were religious and cultural differences that divided the two countries and a lot of violence that ensued as a result.  Looking at the royal lines and reading their various stories is a bit overwhelming considering all the back and forth that went on throughout history.  The castle also has a lot of military objects from ancient all the way to present day and the Scottish crown jewels with a long exhibit leading up to it.  Since the city is built on hills there were so many great views and I couldn't resist taking numerous pictures of all the beautiful landscape and cityscape.  The architecture throughout the city is quite beautiful and mostly well kept which is why it such a popular tourist city.  However I was exhausted by the number of kitchy Scottish shops and constant crowds along the Royal Mile.  Overall I enjoyed Edinburgh a lot but was actually glad when arrived back in Glasgow.  In felt someonewhat more comfortable and for the first time that I belong here since I was returning from somewhere else.  There is so much to see in Edinburgh though, I may have to go back later.