Goodbye London, Hello Scotland: March 26-27, 2013

On Tuesday we left London to head to Scotland. We took the underground to King's Cross station, the location where Platform 9 3/4 was filmed in the Harry Potter movies. King's Cross has taken full advantage of this connection. There is a long line to stand and get your picture taken trying to push a cart, which is mounted on the wall, through the platform. There are two employees who entertain the people in line and help set up pictures with scarves for every house, which are taken by a photographer and which you can buy if you like for 8 pounds or so. However, there is no rule against having other people take pictures for you with your own camera for free, which is what we chose to do. Still, King's Cross now has a Harry Potter shop that sells all kinds of Harry Potter paraphernalia, and they definitely capitalize on this global phenomenon that attracts all kinds of people. It is true that movies or books that are filmed in certain places, such as James Bond or The DaVinci Code, attract tourists from all over the place and contribute to the global culture that I have been talking about.

At the train station I had my first Cornish pasty, which was my first experience of truly British food. A pasty usually consists of meat and potatoes in a pastry shell. The one I ate had chicken, potatoes, and Indian spices, because Britain is actually heavily influenced by Indian cooking. Because India was a British colony, Indian food is quite popular and a major part of the culture. You can find Indian restaurants everywhere.

We boarded the train to Scotland in the afternoon, and it took about 4 1/2 hours to get to Edinburgh. The train was pretty fast moving, but I saw some pretty countryside that contrasted greatly with the urban environment of London. There were rolling green hills that most people associate with Scotland and overall beautiful scenery, including quaint little towns. We also got to see the ocean. This scenery is not only very different from London, but also from home. This combination of green hills and ocean is not very common, and it was refreshing to see something besides city. When we got to Edinburgh, we took the bus to Dalkeith, where we are staying. When I came out on the street in Edinburgh, I was struck by how beautiful everything was. I think the architecture is prettier than London. The buildings along the Royal Mile of Edinburgh are very intricately detailed and amazing to look at. Again, Edinburgh has a mix of the modern and historical, but you can see much of the effort that has gone into preserving the buildings. We also got our first glimpse of Edinburgh Castle, a major focal point of the city.

Dalkeith is a very quaint little town, and the Dalkeith Palace is very pretty, although very cold, and very much a creaky old house, especially with most of the students gone for Spring Break. We got here at about 7:00 p.m. or so, but almost everything was already closed. Even in Edinburgh, most places are closed by 6:30 p.m. This was extremely surprising to me as back home most places in big cities can be open until between 10:00- midnight or later, and in small towns until about 10:00. It's strange to have to plan our schedule around this, and we are back at the palace by about 7:00, or at least headed back because everything is closed by then. Our first night here we tried our first Fish and Chips with brown sauce, which is a kind of vinegary sauce which is very popular here. They were good, and it was exciting to say that I had had authentic British food.

Palace of Holyrood

On Wednesday we went to breakfast at a restaurant in Dalkeith where we tried a full Scottish breakfast, which included pork sausage, beans, ham, hash browns, toast, a half of a roasted tomato, mushrooms, black pudding, an egg, and a potato scone. I tried a little bit of everything, even the black pudding, because I think it is important to try the native cuisine. After breakfast we went to Edinburgh and walked down the Royal Mile to the Palace of Holyrood, which is the Queen's summer home. It was very pretty, and the rooms were very elaborate. We weren't allowed to take pictures on the inside, but the tour took us through the history of the royals that designed the palace and lived there; there was a lot of interesting information. Edinburgh is basically a city built on gigantic hills, so many of the streets are very steep, and the topmost point is the castle. It took a while to get used to the inclines, but all of the buildings were beautiful and interesting to look at. At lunch I tried haggis for the first time, and it actually wasn't bad. I decided since I was here I needed to try it--it's part of the local culture, and I want to experience that as much as possible.

View from museum terrace

I learned some interesting things about Scotland. There are almost no bathrooms in public places--instead there may be one public bathroom that many businesses share. Many Scots also think that all Americans own guns. They are very anti-gun in the U.K., and there are a lot of regulations you have to comply with in order to own one. Also, the National Museum of Scotland is free, which has an amazing view from a terrace on the 7th floor. In fact, they think that all museums should be free for the sake of education. This is not the same viewpoint as the U.S., where they charge you for practically everything. I also noticed that even if they do charge admission in some places, some may let you come back for free for a year, or there are discounts and family rates available that aren't always available in the U.S.

The last thing we did on Wednesday was go to Tesco, basically Scotland's Wal-Mart for how common it is, the grocery store. It had everything a normal grocery store in the U.S. does, but it was interesting to see which brands you could find that were also in the U.S., and what was different. For example, they don't use high fructose corn syrup in their juice here. These are small differences that can set cultures apart in large ways. We also watched Brave last night, which seemed very appropriate even though we didn't make it to Stonehenge. So far I love Scotland, and next up is Edinburgh Castle!

Note: Non-captioned pictures from Google Images