(no subject)
Amittai meets me at the bus station, and we begin walking up the hill
to his flat. Which is right next to the castle. Right.
Next. To. The. Castle. Pretty amazing views out of the windows, if I
do say so myself.
The flat is the top 6 windows on the building on the right, including the 3 dormer windows.
The next day there I saw them mowing the grass on
the hillside outside the castle, which involved men going down a very
steep slope while attached to the fence up top via rope. Very nice.
Anyway, Ami and I went for a walk, getting some pretty good Indian
food for supper, and chatting with one of his downstairs neighbors, an
undergrad at the University, from Canada. We also went to the
supermarket to get , you know, food. I really like going places where
people I know live, because I tend to get to see a slightly more
prosaic view of the place I am visiting. I like that much more than
only seeing all the shiny things. I like seeing the shinies *too*,
but it is nice to have another side. Also, the supermarket had this
awesome awesome toffee that I didn't see anywhere else on the trip,
that I later went back to buy more of.
The next day we walked from the castle all the way down the Royal
Mile, passing by "Jenny Ha's" on the way, which I very much misread as
"Jenny Hu's". We made our way to Holyrood Park, which is a lovely bit
of quasi-wilderness in the city, and walked up to the highest point,
Arthur's Seat. It was really damn windy, and actually pretty steep,
but cool nonetheless.
That is Holyrood Palace in the middle left, sort of foreground. I hear the Queen stays there when she is in Edinburgh. The Firth of Forth is the body of water behind the city.
This being me chilling at the top point, marked by the white thing. I later lost the hat which is sitting in my lap in this photo.
We then walked down and out through the other
half of the park, and made our way to a pub near where Amittai works.
I actually really enjoyed this. People there seemed much more to use
the pub as the socialization place, rather than meeting at houses, or
whatnot. It was not overly crowded in the mid afternoon, but
pleasantly so, with people watching sports on the television,
drinking, chatting, etc etc you know. Then these two girls say down
next to us and busted out playing chess, with the spare pieces in an
empty whiskey tin, which was pretty awesome.
Then we made it back to the flat, and Amittai made what was , I must
admit, a pretty spectacular chicken soup. Boy's getting to be a good
cook. At least of chicken soup. But I will take what I can get! And
in this case, the getting was good. So, we ate the tasty soup, and
then watched a bad movie, and that was the end of that. I then slept
much better.
The next day, after waking up, I strolled leisurely north the mile or
so to the Royal Botanical Gardens. I do love me some gardens. These
ones were pretty nice, especially the scottish highland section. They
apparently have some well known greenhouses there, but I didn't want
to pay for entry, so I didn't. It is all very logical you see. I did
stop for a bit at the cafe thing and drink some tea and write some
postcards. The high point of sitting there was watching all the
little kids with their cups of coffee. It seems to be working out
alright for them.
At that point, I went home again, and napped some more. The sleeping
thing could be presumed to be the motif of the first part of the trip,
I suppose.
I saw this walking back from the Gardens. It just makes me think of a movie tagline. Announcer intoning it in a very deep voice...