Edinburgh, Gladstone's Land, Britannia, Literary Pub Crawl

This morning I had my first run at haggis while actually in Scotland.  It seemed to be about 50% some sort of meat and 50% oats (not oatmeal, just oats).  Not inedible, but also nothing I'll be looking to replicate back in Lancaster.  Another good thing about Scotland, and all of Great Britain is the ketchup (and brown sauce).  Back home I have been made to feel self-conscious about putting ketchup on my eggs.  I can't do that in public.  Over here it is almost impolite if you don't.

The haggis is at 10 o'clock on the plate in this picture

We walked up the Royal Mile to Gladstone's Land, a docented museum displaying artifacts of 17th century Edinburgh in the property of Thomas Gladstone.  A wealthy merchant and his wife lived and worked on the second floor, making fashionable dresses with imported material.  Edinburgh, being a very crowded city at the time, tended to build their narrow houses with shared exterior walls straight up.  Gladstone's was a six story building. Three of those stories are the museum now.  Incidentally, in Europe, the first story is the Ground story and the numbered floors start above that.  For example our room is five stories up, but since the ground floor doesn't count, our room number is 433.  It is for this exact reason that I have gotten to know the residents in room 333 so well.

A cloth merchant and tailor, this was his work room

Sandy trying on a period bonnet.  I think she rocks it!

A statue of David Hume, Scotland's principle enlightenment thinker and philosopher

David Hume's shiney toe, rubbed by clients and advocates for luck as they enter court

We took a double-deck bus to Edinburgh's port city, Leith, where Her Majesty's Royal Yacht, the Britannia is open to the public.  The yacht, now decommissioned, is the epitome of maritime luxury, restored to its original 1950s look. 

This Rolls Royce was hoisted aboard the yacht in the event of the need for ground transportation

Lunch, late in the afternoon was at the End of the World Pub.  I had a scotch egg, Sandy fish and chips.  I had another Scotch whisky (here in Scotland it is just called whisky - I'm working on it but some habits are hard to break) and Sandy has grown fond of their hard ciders.  The food was very good.  Amazingly, they put out around 400 plates a day from a kitchen about the size of a walk-in closet.  While we really liked this pub, it is dead center of the tourist attractions.  The tables on either side of us had diners from the United States and when they left the next table over was from Atlanta.  So while they are indeed serving very good food and drink it is not a place that you are going to be rubbing elbows with the locals.  Truth be told, though, no place on the Royal Mile is.

                                                              the kitchen

We finished the night with a literary pub tour.  Starting at the Beehive Inn, two actors, who have been doing this for twenty-five years, led us to several pubs while extolling and lampooning the writers of Scotland.  While I knew of the big three, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and Robert Lewis Stevenson, these actors took us through a litany of other Scottish writers.  It was a night of entertainment, laughter, and a little education.  It now makes me want to read and reread the works of these great authors.  

No one goes to Scotland for the pizza, but it was Friday night.  And, it was open late (the Literary Pub Tour Ended at 10pm), so o'Oliviero Pizzeria fit the bill.