Friday 6 December 2013

Wallace Monument and Stirling Castle

After Halloween night out, I woke up bright and early to catch the bus to Glasgow International for a very special occasion - my mom's visit! She flew IcelandAir like I did, but she got to spend the night in Reykjavik and see Iceland's capital city. She arrived in Glasgow at about 10 am, and we took the bus together back to the city center. Of course the first thing on our agenda was to get her a proper fish supper (apparently the more common way of ordering fish and chips) so after we dropped her luggage in my dorm room we went to the Atholl Arms on Renfield street, just around the corner from the bus station and university.
Checking in was a bit weird, when there was nobody at the reception of the apartments and the doors were locked, the code they'd given Mom not working. Somehow the security guard showed up and let us in, and we settled into the adorable furnished one-bedroom apartment on Bath Street, not two minutes walk from GCU.

Scottish sunshine in Stirling
Wallace's sword
We spent the first day settling into the apartment, and making plans for the ten days Mom was in Scotland. On the Sunday we took the train to Stirling, and walked to the William Wallace monument. Stirling was really cool, and a definite spot to re-visit before I head home to see the Old Town. The Wallace monument stands 220' high overlooking the site of the battle of Stirling bridge. The stairs to the top are narrow and freezing, the day we went was wildly windy and the monument is modelled after Victorian gothic style, with narrow open windows up the tower stairwells. Each level explores sections of Scottish history, but my favourite was the first one that actually told the story of Wallace himself, and houses the actual 5'4" sword in
a glass case. The very top of the monument offers the most amazing views of the city, the mountains and the river - and on a clear day like the one we had, I could see to Edinburgh!















We managed to get a taxi from the monument to Stirling Castle for about five quid, although the taxi driver was pretty shady about taking us for a joy ride around the parking lot. We got there with only just over an hour before the castle closed, and once the sun goes down in Scotland it gets pretty frigid. We spent most of the visit wandering indoors the castle. They have costumed employees in some of the rooms, and one of the women dressed as a lady-in-waiting gave us a full informative brief on the life of the King and Queen, and how the castle came to be. My membership with Historic Scotland got us free entry to the castle and free audioguides. By the time the castle was closing we'd seen as much as we could have and it was dark and freezing. We went down to a pub at the castle gates cleverly called Portcullis, where we had some disappointing wine followed by a phenomenal meal. Train back to Glasgow, first trip a great success.


Wednesday 4 December 2013

Halloween & Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh

Arthur's Seat is apparently one of the most popular climbs in Edinburgh. Some people told us that it was named for the Arthurian legends, but when I looked further into it the Gaelic name for the hilltop iÀrd-na-Said meaning "height of arrows," so the Wikipedia speculation that Arthur's Seat is a warped interpretation of "Archer's" seat makes a lot more sense to me. But honestly, Edinburgh is basically older than Earth itself and so who knows how it ended up the way it is. Six of us (myself, Amanda, Holly, Lauren, Chris, and Joni) took the one-hour train ride to the capital city and went separate ways when we arrived - Amanda, Holly and I walked down the Royal Mile to Holyrood (lol) Park where the trail starts. 
Chapel ruins on the climb to Arthur's Seat

It was a lovely day when we started - clear skies and mild weather. The beginning of the climb wasn't that steep, and there was a ruin of a chapel that we stopped by on the way up for some photos, but mostly because there were tons of huge rocks to climb on. After the chapel it got much steeper and I will sheepishly admit that I need to stop to catch my breath! Once we reached one of the hilltops, the wind started to really get at us. The view of the city was so magnificient, with ocean and mountain and gorgeous architecture all in one line of sight. There was even a little body of water between two hilltops that some swans had collected in. After this, there wasa bit of a cobblestone footpath/stairway that was actually more of a pain than anything else. The very peak of Arthur's Seat was frigid. We all actually bundled up and hunkered down behind a boulder, for fear of being blown clean off the peak by the force of the wind. We had brought some leftover pizza and pancakes (breakfast of champions) and shared a drink at the top while we tried our best to get some pictures, but the wind was so fierce that none of us wanted to risk sitting on the actual stone called "Arthur's seat." 
Trying to stay on Arthur's seat

In the distance, just on the opposite side of the city, there was a massive dark cloud. We watched it approach for a little while until we realized what dark clouds typically led to, and decided to get down from the mountain as soon as we could. We only made it to about the chapel (we had to stop for a roll down the hill) before the heavens opened up on us and turned the path into a muddy mess. I'm always so thankful that Holly and I bought a pair of hiking boots each, and Amanda proved us right when she couldn't get any grip in the mud and nearly ate a puddle.
By the time we got to the Starbucks on the Royal Mile to meet Lauren and the boys I was soaked through (even with my rain jacket on). There was a disturbing lack of Lauren and the guys, so we called them and found out they were waiting for us at the other Starbucks. At the other end of the Royal Mile. No big deal, since we're drenched anyway, so we walked up to where they were warm, dry, and sipping Starbucks.

We had time for dinner before our tour started so we went to the World's End pub, fully decked out for Halloween. The pub was right at the Tron where we met up with Auld Reekie tours. Our guide took us through old Edinburgh, stopping at some historical sites such as the old gallows square, where we could still see staples in the stone walls that apparently were put through prisoners' ears at one time. We went into the Auld Reekie torture museum, where our guide told us about the horrible things each instrument was designed for, before he took us into the vaults. The underground vaults of Edinburgh are abandoned stone rooms and our guide told us ghost stories of each individual vault we went into. It was spooky, but the scariest part of the night was when Amanda got spooked and screamed in the dark for no good reason, and made me jump out of my skin. 

Pints at the World's End