Mega Backblog: Let's just bring it up to date, already

Dearest Loyal Followers,

By now I'm sure there are only a few of you remaining - you may have noticed that my semi-slacking off turned to full on abandonment of the blog. Essays are to blame for this - I have spent a good deal of the past month holed up in various libraries and coffee shops trying to churn out an annotated bibliography and two 4,000 word essays. But, as of yesterday, I am free for the semester - so I figured it was time to fill you in on what's been going on in my life. This will be a little briefer than usual, only because I'd like to go back to telling you about what's currently going on in my life rather than what happened a few weeks earlier.

I think I left off in early November, so let's start with Glasgow:

We took a two day trip to Glasgow, staying overnight at a hostel, although this was probably unnecessary because the 45 min train ride is so cheap, that it would have been less expensive to go home and sleep in my own bed and then come back the next day. Oh well. LOTS to do in this city, so here's a quick rundown of the highlights:

1. The Cathedral. I'll let the photos speak for themselves:






2. Shopping. Glasgow is known for its shopping - much better than Edinburgh. I didn't really do any, due to my student-sized budget, but we did walk around the nice pedestrian shopping streets downtown like this one:


And indoor malls/arcades like this:




3. Kelvingrove Museum. This museum is a bit of a hodgepodge, but in the best way possible. One half is themed "Life" - much like the ROM, it has animal skeletons and old suits of armour - and the other half is "Art," which pretty much speaks for itself. Their collection included a few impressionist works which was neat, and a very cool exhibition on Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Glasgow born designer and architect (more on him later). The museum itself is in a beautiful building located in beautiful Kelvingrove Park:






4. The University. Located in the West end overlooking Kelvingrove Park, the Uni has a spectacular view and some pretty spectacular buildings such as this one:




I also found a plaque commemorating Glaswegian and alum James McGill - it kind of neat that all the old Canadian universities (Queens, McGill, U of T) are all based on the Scottish model:


5. Charles Rennie Mackintosh. This Arts & Crafts/Art Nouveau designer is all over Glasgow - though we sadly missed the chance to take a tour of the inside of the Glasgow School of Art, we did have tea in the Willow Tearoom, one of several tearooms he designed in the city:




6. The Burrell Collection. A bus ride away from the city centre, this museum houses the personal collection of Sir William Burrell, a wealthy industrialist who bought artifacts from all over the world - everything from Egyptian carvings to elaborate tapestries to Chinese vases to Degas painting.

7. The Barras. This market was closing down by the time we got there, but normally there are all sorts of things for sale - antiques, books, posters, clothing. Hopefully we'll get to go back and see it in full swing.

8. The Weather. Less of a highlight and more of a nuisance. We were nearly drenched Saturday night while looking for a restaurant in the West End - luckily we managed to borrow an umbrella from the Glasgow Hilton (I asked if they had any for sale while stopped for directions, and he just gave one to us). Sunday morning we faced hail with a tiny tiny amount of snow, followed by an afternoon of ten minute downpours every half hour on Sunday (lucky we had the umbrella). Maybe it was just that weekend, but the Glaswegian weather seemed much more inconsistent than Edinburgh.

Overall, Glasgow gets two thumbs up - most museums are free, there's lots to do, and restaurants are good and plentiful.

On the flipside of Glasgow, there is Newcastle. Early in December we popped down to check out this city (only an hour or so away by train), but for the most part we were fairly disappointed. Here are the lowlights:

1. Segedenum. This Roman fort used to mark the end of Hadrian's Wall. Sadly, not enough survived to make Segedenum worth seeing. Since some of the wall bases are still there (barely sticking out of the ground), they've filled in the remaining rocks so that you can see the outline of the fort from a silly looking tower sticking out of the museum. They've also reconstructed a Roman Bath house, though we weren't really sure why - as you can see below, the links to any original bathhouse that may have existed at this site are pretty tenuous. Even the nearby chunk of Hadrian's wall was disappointing - though they've tried to make up for that by building a reconstruction next to it. Overall, too many reconstructions to make it worthwhile. That being said, the nearby Wallsend metro station has signs in Latin in honour of the Romans, which is sorta neat.








2. Almost no restaurants. Or at least not in the main shopping area. Though the city comes alive at night, with girls in minimal clothing and heels tumbling out of cabs at every turn (the Geordies are known for their resistance to the cold, apparently), it took us an hour to find a restaurant that wasn't a pub filled with rowdy men watching the football game. Though the one we ended up going to was delicious, you'd think an "up and coming" city like Newcastle supposedly is would have more than a few decent restaurants within walking distant of the shopping areas...

3. NO NEWCASTLE BROWN ALE - seriously. We couldn't find it on tap anywhere (maybe it only exists in bottles), but when we finally settled on a bar, they didn't even have the bottled version. Come. On.

There were some good things. The weather was perfect. The Castle of Newcastle was cool (from the outside at least - it's really only a small section of the original castle, so we didn't want to pay to go in). St Christopher's Cathedral was also quite nice. The bridges are cool. LOTS of shopping in Newcastle (apparently on the edge of town they have the biggest mall in the UK - we did not venture out to see it), but for the most part nothing that you couldn't get in Glasgow.










Overall, a little letdown by Newcastle - however, we may give it another shot and go back when the Hadrian's wall bus tour is running, as apparently this takes you to nearby sections of the wall which are more interesting to look at the Segedenum's pile of rocks.

Sadly, the weekend held more disappointments in store for us. The next day was St Andrew's Day - St Andrews is the patron saint of Scotland, so there were supposed to be a bunch of free events around the city. Most of them ended up being pretty kid focussed - we couldn't even find a pub which was hosting St Andrews celebrations - we had high hopes for haggis and some piping, but in the end the bar we went to was out of haggis and the piper had gone home - by ten at night. However - we did get to go to the Zoo for free. And though we had to wait in line for 45 min in below 0 temperatures (cold for Scotland), we did get to see the penguins! For those who have not tried it, watching penguins can redeem any disappointing weekend - especially when said penguins slip and slide as they try to climb out of the water because the ledge of their pool is icy. Sadly, we missed the penguin parade, which happens every day at two and involves the penguins parading around the zoo outside of their pen... Lilah, I think we need to witness this!

So, other than those major occasions I've mostly been student-ing. We went to a rugby game a few weeks ago, which was really fun - rugby is not nearly as hard to follow as I thought it was. There's a neat Christmas village set up in the Princes Street Gardens - a German market and a Highland market with lots of good food and neat Christmas knick knacks, plus rides which I was too scared to go on, and a skating rink that I was too cheap to pay for (9 pounds for skate rentals and an hour of ice time!). I also started my part-time job - I'm working at a Charity Fundraising Consultant's office doing secretarial work - mostly mail merges which require me to spend several hours a week typing up British addresses, which, unlike Canada and the US, follow no set pattern. I'm always sending things to place like "George House, Greenfields Toll, Renfrew, Meadowshire" and on and on and on - even the postal codes are super inconsistent. Though I have addressed letters to charitable foundations at Buckingham Palace - and to David and Victoria Beckham's Charitable Foundation. Woo hoooo....

The real woo hoo is that tomorrow I leave for PARIS! I'll try to blog at least once while I'm there - coming back on the 29th just in time for Hogmanay (Scottish New Year's Eve). Actually, I'd better get packing - but hopefully another update is not too far away!

Backblog: Round 4, Do I remember the 5th of November?

You know I'm avoiding schoolwork when there are two back to back blogposts. Today I'm going to take you back to the beginning of this month, on that day when we heaved a global sigh of relief over the US Presidential election results. I had been following the campaigns pretty closely since I got here (through the miracle of the interweb), and even went to a Democrats Abroad debate watching party. A lot of my friends here are American, but even those that aren't were all worked up on election night. We opted to go to a bar near campus to watch the results, as it was having a PoliSci Society-hosted election party. The only problem was that bars here close at 1, so we had to leave before any significant results had come in. I watched a bit more in our residence common room, but as I had a seminar the next morning at 9am, I only stayed up til about 2am. I have to say, though - it kind of felt like Christmas morning to wake up early the next day, while the city was still quiet, knowing (well, hoping desperately and suspecting) the happy results that would await. Watching the final speeches and videos of the celebrations was the equivalent of opening presents. It's really been amazing to see how Obama has truly been claimed as a "global citizen" - one of my best friends is in Kenya right now, and she's been telling me about how crazy the Kenyans are about Obama - she even went to see "Obama: the musical." Few were happier than my American friends here - many were preparing self-imposed exile, either staying here or even heading north should the results have turned out differently.

In the same spirit of celebration, though maybe not in the same spirit of the events which inspired the holiday, it was appropriate that the next day was Guy Fawkes' Day. Guy Fawkes' was the one "British" holiday which I had heard a good deal about before coming to the UK, so I was expecting burning effigies and the whole shebang. Apparently, however, the English are much more into remembering remembering the 5th of November - I guess the Scots wouldn't have been so heartbroken had the English Parliament been blown up. That being said, there were still fireworks going off all around the city. It happened to be a fairly foggy night, which, while gradually decreasing our ability to see the fireworks as said evening progressed, did give the night a particularly moody atmosphere. Here's a picture taken by my friend (my camera can't deal with low light) on Calton Hill, from whence we could see fireworks nearby and those going off all around the city:

I'm really enjoying the fact that Edinburgh seems to like incorporating fire/fireworks into its holidays (probably to counterbalance the fact that the sun now sets around 4pm). So I'd have to say despite the post-election tiredness, fog, and lack of effigies, Guy Fawkes' Night was still pretty cool to witness.

Backblog: Round 3, my first visitor

Argh - everytime I write one of these catch-up entries, I promise myself that I'll write another one within a couple days, and so finally get caught up... then school and other things get in the way. I suppose it's reasonable to put school and doing blog-worthy activities ahead of writing the blog itself on my priority list but still... argh.

Today let's jump back about a month to the end of October. One of my best friends from Guelph, Kate, came to visit me for a week, as she's in Paris for 8 months teaching English. It was fun to get to show off my recently acquired knowledge of Edinburgh tourist destinations - we managed to pack a lot into one week!

On the first day, we tackled the two biggies which bookend the Royal Mile: the Palace of Holyroodhouse and Edinburgh Castle. Though, as you now know, I have visited the latter, I had yet to visit the former. Holyroodhouse is still one of the Queen's Royal residences - she stays here when she comes to Edinburgh. However, when she's not around, you can walk through the main rooms, including the apartments of Mary Queen of Scots (in which a plaque marks the spot where Mary's Secretary, David Rizzio, was violently stabbed to death by Mary's jealous husband Lord Darnley - man, Scottish history is dramatic). Unfortunately, no photography was allowed inside, and the Palace was fairly well staffed - so no sneaky pictures to show you the tapestries (man rich people loved tapestries back in the day - sometimes they refer to them as an "arras" and all I can imagine is someone jumping out from behind to stab me, Polonius-style). Perks of the Palace include a free (though somewhat cheesy) audio tour, and free entry for a year with my original entry ticket!



Attached to the Palace is the ruined Abbey of Holyroodhouse. Quite a contrast between the still fully functional Palace and the ruined Abbey.


(that's Kate!)


Amazing how such elaborate stonework survives in these ruined cathedrals and abbeys.


After the Palace, we hustled up to the Castle in time for the one o'clock gun. Kate tried to do what I've decided is impossible - take a picture of the gun. Here she is lining up the shot, only to jump a few minutes later and miss it, which is better than I can do - I never even manage to press the shutter button.



Other visits during the week included St Giles Cathedral (which I still have yet to photograph), Calton Hill, a pub quiz, browsing the shops on Princes Street, and the Museum of Edinburgh, where we found an exhibit on printing featuring this cute children's version of Robert Burns ("Burns for Bairns"):


The Kilt is a flap, here lifted to reveal Charlie's underpants. Apparently censored for children - I've heard true Scots don't wear anything under their kilts...

The week ended with a bang, as Kate's last night was Hallowe'en. I'd always thought that Europeans didn't celebrate Hallowe'en, but apparently that's only partly true - Brits go all out. They also apparently invented it. The lines at local costume shops were crazy, so Kate and I summoned up our camp-counselor skills and threw together last-minute costumes - I was Peter Pan, and Kate was Esmerelda:


My costume ended up winning "Best Homemade Costume" at our residence's party - I wasn't sure whether to take that as a compliment, or, as one of my friends put it, as the equivalent of the award given to the kid who made their costume "without their parent's help" - kind of like an A for effort rather than style.

Hallowe'en in Edinburgh is more than just dressing up, however. That same night the pagan festival of Samhuinn is also celebrated. To mark the end of summer and the coming of winter, there is a parade down the Royal Mile and a sort of masque in the square in front of St Giles, involving crazy costumes and lots and lots of fire:


It was a really cool experience - though apparently the spring festival is even more out there (instead of costumes involving near nakedness, I've heard there is actual nakedness, and a gigantic bonfire).

Sadly, Kate returned to Paris the next day - it was so nice to see a familiar face and spend time with someone who is practically family for a week. Luckily, I'll be seeing her again soon - I'm going to visit her in Paris for Christmas, from December 20th -29th! Managed to score ridiculously cheap flights on Ryanair (38 pounds round trip, including taxes!). I'm really excited to see the "City of Lights" all lit up for Christmas - though I'm sad to be away from home, being in Paris isn't a bad alternative...! That's all for now - a bientot!

Backblog: Round 2, Edinburgh Castle

As I've mentioned previously, Edinburgh Castle is just a stone's throw up the street from my residence. Though I live so close to it, it took us about a month of living here to finally take a look around. What's nice is that I've bought a membership in an organization called Historic Scotland, so now I can go to the castle for free, as often as I like, for a year - and I get to skip the line and get my tickets from the Priority Visitor desk. The VIP treatment ain't too shabby..

To get y'all in the mood, here are some shots of the castle which I took on my first day here - I think they give you a good idea of the grandeur and presence it commands, lording over the city from the top of an extinct volcano.



The craggy rocks give you an idea as to why the Scots decided to build a castle on this site - definitely an air of impenetrability.

Coming up from the Royal Mile, the effect is a bit different, as you have to weave through hordes of tourists and try not to get hit by tour buses in the carpark. Still impressive, if you ask me:


The one thing I was especially surprised by when actually in the castle is how much space and how many buildings there are up top. Part of the castle is actually still a working military base, so there are soldiers coming and going, and some buildings are closed to the public.




I also never quite realized just how high up it is.


Here is the view to the north east, looking towards the Firth of Forth, Calton Hill, and the Scott Monument.


Everyday at one o'clock (except Sundays), a gun is fired from the Castle - originally to tell sailors on boats out in the Firth what time it was, but now more for the sake of tradition. The one o'clock gun is, in my experience, impossible to capture on film - even when you're expecting it, and have your camera all lined up and ready to go, you can't help but jump when it goes off. I never even manage to push the shutter. I also love the crowd's behaviour before and after: before is expectant silence, afterwards nervous laughter. The shot below was taken shortly before the gun went off:


Another must-see at the Castle: the crown jewels of Scotland. I've told you already about the famous Stone of Destiny, which is housed in the Royal Apartments along with the crown, sceptre, and sword of Scotland. There's a cheesy, mannequin filled museum which fills you in on the background of the jewels, which is actually an interesting history - they've been hidden away/almost lost so many times that it's impressive they survived to this day.


You can also see the small room where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to her son James, who eventually united the English and Scottish monarchies as James I of England and James VI of Scotland.


And this is the Great Hall, built by Mary's grandfather James IV of Scotland:


The oldest part of the castle is St. Margaret's chapel, built by her son King David I of Scotland in the 12th Century:


The chapel was the only part spared when the rest of the original castle was destroyed during the Scottish Wars of Independence by the Scots themselves, who lacked the resources to hold the castle and decided it was better to destroy it than to let the English lay siege.

The most recent building at the Castle is the National War Memorial, built after World War I in a really striking Art Deco style - no photos allowed inside, unfortunately.

Other things to see at the Castle include: the National War Museum, museums for the military regiments based out of the Castle, a recreated military prison, recreated prisoner of war lodgings, and a pet cemetery for soldiers' pups:

For all of you who are considering a visit to Edinburgh, the Castle is a must-see. The nice thing is that I can come along too, without paying the ridiculous admission prices everytime someone comes to visit. I've already been a second time with my friend Kate when she came to visit - but more on that in Round 3...

Backblog: Round 1, St. Andrews

I've been a bad blogger, and could spend a whole post apologizing for this fact, and providing a list of convincing excuses, but I'd rather get on with it - I think you probably would as well!

So, let's backtrack: just over two weeks ago we took another day long jaunt, this time up the coast to St. Andrews. We lucked out and had brilliant weather all day, which I think only added to the good impression made upon me by the town.

Of course, no daytrip would be complete without a little castle-visiting. The ruined St Andrews castle is fairly small by Stirling or Edinburgh standards, but neat to poke around in nevertheless (they even have a preserved mine and counter-mine running under the castle - which I did go a little ways into, despite my fear of tiny, dimly lit underground passages).



The castle also commands a rather nice point looking out over the North Sea. Here's a view of the castle from the adjacent shore, at low tide.


St. Andrews Cathedral, however, definitely makes up for what the castle lacks in size. This pic of me (in my dorky, Montreal-esque fake Ray Bans) only kinda sorta gives you an idea.



If the cathedral is this impressive in its ruined state, you can only imagine what it must have been like in its prime. And it was completed in the 12th century! It blows my mind to think that things like this could be built so long ago...



Here is a view of (L-R) the cathedral, the town, and the castle, as viewed from St. Rude's tower:


It also amazes me that all of these grand ruins and buildings, centuries old, are so often smack dab in the middle of the city or town, with ordinary people living and working around them.


Or - going to school around them. St Andrews University (yes mother, the alma mater of Prince Will) is a collection of nice grand old buildings lined along and just in from the coast. Below, for example, is the Department of Economics:


Kind of reminds me of Queens - old buildings, leaf-strewn lawns, waterfront property, preppy undergrads wandering by in sweatpants and uggs (seriously - the uniform spans the Atlantic).


Speaking of the Atlantic: the beach in St. Andrews was lovely. Lots of kids flying kites, and even windsurfers! (in wetsuits... it definitely wasn't a day for swimming).

St Andrews is also the birthplace of golf, so we took a stoll just a little bit inland from the beach to check out the famous courses.


This is the "New Course," I believe. Apparently it is ridiculously impossible (or at least ridiculously expensive) to get to play on the "Old Course," which is, as its title suggests, the oldest golf course in the world. We were really hoping to find some tourist-trap mini-golf course, but no luck - only a putting green (bo-ring) which claims to be the first mini-golf course. No shortage of golf shops, however - I think in the end we counted close to 15 about the town.

So while I wouldn't have wanted to go to school there (too small of a town for me), I quite enjoyed St Andrews. Those of you who have nothing better to do with your time may have noticed that this castle was castle number four - in fact you are wrong. I've skipped over my visit to Edinburgh castle because I've been twice now, and want to put up all the pictures together with those I took during my friend Kate's visit - await them in round 2 of backblog!

PS - Just FYI, I've opened up comments now, so everyone should now be able to post comments without registering, if they'd like to do so!