Edinburgh

Bennie and the Jets. Next installment: Edinburgh, Scotland.

 

 

 

Edinburgh is every goth's wet dream. Medieval architecture, rainy skies, narrow dark alleyways, an ancient and violent history. If you're not a goth, then it's still a pretty fucking sweet place.

 

Tired of fish and chips, we find our first mexican restaurant of the trip and take advantage. While waiting for our food we see that they have brass parrots just like the awesome one we have hanging over our door at home, given to us by J-Chizzle aka J-Chase aka Jawsdog.

 

Scottish versions of Mexican food are actually pretty great.

 

MmmmmMargeritas.

 

 

 

Really? A chill out room? That's fantastic cause we love to chill.

 

Mcewans, the only real Scottish beer we actually found on this leg of the journey.

 

 

 

Our hostel is right on a busy strip of town called The Royal Mile, so named because it's a mile long and has royal castle and parliament buildings on both ends. There are crap tons of tourists here, like this bloke with the video camera. In this part of town it becomes exceedingly difficult to actually find a real Scottish person.

 

 

"A culture of drinking" -- as our Polish barman from the night before called it -- enables public beer consumption. Totes awes.

 

It may be hard to tell from this photo, but these whiskey bottles are super tiny, like a few centimeters long. They're sitting in a plastic bag in the window of a whisky shop.

 

 

 

 

In all the old buildings there are dozens of chimney stacks on top. In the olden days every flat in every building got heat from internal fireplaces. Everyone used them constantly, sending unhealthy amounts of black smoke into the air every night. Eventually the city stepped in and limited their use.

 

 

We stop in at a sweet Camera Obscura building. You can go to the top floor and into a dark and windowless room. There's a small hole in the ceiling that's amplified through a few lenses and projects a live image of what's happening outside onto a big bowl in the floor. Pretty sweet!

 

This section is for McTubbins, who we think would've enjoyed this crazy shite. On one level of this camera obscura building was a whole crazy cadre of hologram images of weird shit. Here is a falcon on its falconer's hand.

 

This piece was entitled "Scream." Totally intense right? Right. Kinda.

 

Werewolves dude!

 

 

 

Edinburgh Castle. Right smack dab in the middle of the city center is a massive castle on a hill. Totally looks like that old video game Castlevania. In the olden days it was a working military base that was involved in like 30,000 battles and wars and sieges. Now its designed for people like us to just walk around and check it out.

 

 

Don't mess with the Scottish.

 

View from the castle.

 

 

Diorama of Scottish wars dude.

 

Real names on gravestones: Tinker and Scamp.

 

There is a fine line between serious photo-blogging and dumb tourist photo-taking. We are proudly skirting this line.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shamrock shakes on top of our Guinness.

 

We're on a nacho streak. These were from a place that turned out to be like AMERICA BAR or some shit. They had all sorts of crazy crap on the walls just like TGI Fridays.

 

Near the end of our second night in Edinburgh we are exhausted due to jet lag, time changes, and miles and miles of uninterrupted walking. It takes its toll so we head up to the aforementioned Upstairs Chill Out Bar to be tired. It turns out to be a Polish bar staffed and frequented only by Polish people who like calm dance music and faux cow skinned furniture.

 

 

Scotland is way north, did you know this? As a result, the sun doesn't fully go down until like 11PM and it comes back up at like 3:30 AM. This is right after it gets dark.

 

Friendly Scottish kids.

 

 

Beach trip, Euro styles. Tall boys of Stella Artois, crackers and cheese.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, we are American tourists.

 

Back in town at the self-proclaimed "Oldest Pub in Scotland." It's basically one small room tucked into a dark alleyway off the main strip. Pretty sweet.

 

 

 

When in Scotland, one must drink Scotch.

 

Tastes scotchy.

 

Two fingers of scotch. Get it? HA!

 

Real Scottish people look awesome.

 

We find a little bar tucked onto a side street that has a piano and a guitar. Jeff annoys the locals with drunken improvisation in E Major.

 

Then, out of nowhere, these loud and crazy Scottish kids show up -- all between 17 and 18 years old. Jeff and the main kid, Cain, have a jam session on some Oasis and Coldplay tunes.

 

They take a shining to us yanks for some reason. They insist that we are going to hang out with them, all night. This sounds like a good idea at first.

 

This girl claims that she and Cain, her boyfriend, are "just like Kate Moss and Pete Doherty!" We can't argue.

 

They buy us tequila shots and try to tell us how to properly take one down. We're all like "dudes, we know alright? Mexico is way closer to us than you."

 

Then things start to get odd. They take us down the street to some crazy pub called The Chunky Monkey or something where everyone in the place is laying together on a big bed. Cain is saying that we should come stay at his place with him, 30 minutes out of town, even though we have to be up at 8AM to catch a flight to London.

 

They tell us that emphatically we really should come with them and that they won't take no for an answer and that they will be getting us ecstasy, speed and Cocaine and it will be great and we should really just come with them. We thank them kindly, pretend to go to the bathroom together and then leave. Lame, we know, but they were really starting to get strange. After all, they were like 17 years old.