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The Old Country I woke up on Monday, July 15 feeling my old self again. Dressing, I made my way to the main dining room and sat down, ignoring the little room numbers at each place since I didn't know what they were. Like the rest of the Arden, the dining room was high and ornate and old. A bevy of young girls in casual uniforms ran around serving trays off a dumbwaiter. After a long wait, I ordered scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage and orange juice. Everything had a odd processed taste, as if they had been reconstituted from powder. The Americans around me grimaced and commented sotto voce to each other on how awful it was, and I resented them for it, even though I was thinking the same thing. It sounded crass coming from someone else. I headed out going west, to where Royal Terrace ran into Leith Road and then Princes Street. The young ladies out and about in the sunny rush hour were much more attractive than the few I had seen on Sunday, catching buses and cabs and scurrying to work. A large ugly modern mall, the St. James, was on the other side of Leith Road. I wandered down to the entrance to Waverely Station, the train station, and watched the buses coming and going. It was about 50ø out, and I felt free and unencumbered. Crossing the North Bridge, I wandered down to Cowgate, the next east-west road south of the Royal Mile. I stopped in a newsvendor, a corner stand which reminded me of the little neighborhood stores in the Chicago of my youth, and bought the morning's edition of the Daily Scotsman, Edinburgh's -- and Scotland's -- main paper. I wandered a little further and sat in the courtyard of a small private hospital to read the paper. The land around Cowgate was flat and full of rather unfriendly buildings, the purpose of which was ambiguous -- too severe to be housing, too cheery for warehouses, with no identification at all. The spires and arches and buttresses of Old Town were doubly beautiful in contrast to the rather plain, smooth-stucco anonymousness of the more modern Edinburgh architecture. While there were not many of these monstrosities in Edinburgh, I had read that other cities in Scotland, most notably Dundee, had been razed to the ground in the 1960s and the downtowns reconstructed in this faceless modernity. There are two blocks back in Alexandria which received this treatment, and the obscene ugliness of the new buildings was enough to make me wonder if Ellen had been right about the sanity of the 20th century. A large feature story in the Scotsman on Kathleen Turner said that she got turned on by doing nude scenes. Sure. There was a strange vegetable smell in the air, and with a shock of recognition I realized that it was the smell of beer brewing. (I had done a little home brewing, the results rather uneven, to say the least.) Following the smell, I ended up in front of the Tennant-McEwan- Tartan brewery, a block from the royal palace. I was tickled to think that when the Queen and Phillip and the whole crew spent their two weeks a year at Holyrood (I just missed them, in fact), they awoke to the heady smell of hops and barley each morning. By this time I was in the shadow of the Salisbury Crag. I had done a little research the night before and found that the Crag and the higher mountain behind it, Arthur's Seat, were part of the Queen's Park which surrounded the palace. On my earlier walks down the Royal Terrace, the crag looked deceptively close and small until I realized that the little dots on the slope were people. From underneath, the thing was gigantic, a huge rectangular slab of Scottish basalt thrown up from the ground like a sidewalk square dislodged by a tree root. I started up the footpath with a confident jog in my step, but was soon dragging and panting. Good Lord, am I that out of shape? The path was steeper than I expected and I had to stop, wheezing and bending over, every few feet. But the view was worth it. Leaning over the verge, I could look down the crag's sheer sides and watched a man in a tweed hat walking his golden retriever on the golf-green lawns alongside the palace. Over him, Calton Hill and its monuments caught the pale morning sun, bracketed by the blue of the firth on each side. Old Town was a forest of spires and steeples and buildings so old that they seemed almost mythical. Above Old Town, perched on its volcanic throne, Edinburgh Castle looked as if it had been built before Man and would outlast him. I snapped away with my camera and breathed the cool air off the North Sea. The path eventually leveled off and made a sharp turn around the face of the crag. Now my view was of Edinburgh's suburbs to the south, flat and new and alternately pretty and squalid. Edinburgh, thankfully, is one of the few cities in Britain without "tower blocks," groups of three of four highrise public housing units usually stuck right in the middle of the decaying downtowns. In the next few weeks I found them in most cities, usually the tallest structures visible and uniformly ugly, strict Bahaus concrete coffins with no charm or dignity or presence. I finally turned around to return to earth and found that the path was so steep that descending it was almost as wearying. I ended up in the Holyrood palace courtyard, sitting on the edge of a very strange fountain with cherubs and gargoyles, looking across the courtyard at a statue of Edward VII. A motorcoach arrived and disgorged a phalanx of Americans, who advanced on the palace as if storming it in battle. One, in a T-shirt extolling the virtues of a Los Angeles bar, was busy taking videotapes of his family posed against the palace. Videotaping one's vacation is common now, but this was the first time I'd ever seen it and I was appalled. What a geeky thing to do. I had very quickly taken on an "us versus them" mentality in Scotland, "us" being the Scots and "them" being the asshole tourists -- not just the Americans, but the Italians with their loud, sweaty children; the Germans, crew-cut and coolly lethal; the French and their loud snotty opinions. The Americans had the advantage of being the least objectionable of the lot, but they still were a jarring contrast to the Scottish residents, who were low-key and wry and not inclined to draw attention to themselves. I just hope I wasn't offending them also. I hated to think that someone would recognize me as a tourist. I wasn't in the mood to visit the palace itself, so I again wandered up the Royal Mile. I was already thinking of my gargantuan gift problem -- I had to get something for about 15 people, and I hate gift shopping with a passion. I visited a few shops and found some kilts for my 1-year-old niece Whitney and a stack of postcards for bragging to people. ("Here I am in Scotland. . . .") Further up the street I found a magnificent little shop which dealt in antique maps, and after much ooing and ahhing I bought a little map of Edinburgh printed in 1880 (and not discernibly different from the map in my tourist guide, despite the passage of 105 years), a big beautiful map of the Isle of Skye from 1824 and, since I was such a nice guy, an exquisite miniature engraving of the Faeroe Islands for Ellen, printed in 1805 -- which is when Ellen wished she could visit them, I'm sure. I paid with my American Express card and arranged to have them shipped home ahead of me. I was amazed to discover, by the way, that practically every shop, restaurant and bar I had encountered so far in Scotland took the American Express card, a much higher acceptance rate for the card than in America. The only other card that came close to Amex's acceptability was the European version of Visa, known as Brava. By this time it was 11 AM, the pub opening time in Scotland. (Scotland, thank God, did not have the same rules on pubs as England, which required that all pubs be closed for four hours in the afternoon. This pernacious little law was finally abolished in 1987, a few years after my trip.) I had a pint lager in Jenny Ha's, a quiet and unpretentious bar "established in 1749," the same year that Alexandria was founded. Inside, a golf match was on the TV and a number of tweedy old gentlemen with walking sticks and imperious eyes were cheering on the players. The Scots have a stare unlike any others -- a candid, piercing, baleful glare which manages to be at once scary and charming. I watched them cheering on the players in quiet pride, and I could think of worse ways to spend my twilight years than watching golf with them. I headed out again and, under the old Toll House, I found the Edinburgh Brass Rubbing Centre. It was a large light room, reminiscent of the art classrooms in my old high school. A dignified lady behind a counter stood guard over a number of brass bas-reliefs mounted on wood. For £3.50, I was given a box of art crayons, a long sheet of art paper and my choice of the figures to do some rubbing. I selected a male and a female figure, each about 3 feet long and dressed in medieval finery, and made a delicate job of each in gold crayon. Around me, a number of other people, mostly children, were doing other rubbings. Most were doing it wrong, I thought, bearing down hard on the crayons and coloring the damn things until they looked like cartoons. Apparently, this is the accepted way at the Edinburgh Brass Rubbing Centre, because when I returned the figure and the crayons the lady behind the counter asked me if I was sure that I didn't want to do it again. "Ye want it all one color?" she asked disbelievingly. Yes, I did. I rolled the rubbings into a cardboard tube and continued my wandering. I was feeling a mite peckish, and stopped into a restaurant called Gladstone's up near the castle. The entranceway had a beautiful mosaic in the floor from a previous incarnation which read "Royal Mile Bar" in elegant script. I ordered a pat‚ sandwich, salad and a pint of McEwan's from the bar and took them to a table in the back. The stereo was playing an Elton John album, and I caught myself wishing for some British music before I remembered that Elton John is British. Beside me, a white-wine-and-Volvo family from New Jersey complained about the food and the weather and the lack of interesting things to do. Yeah, Edinburgh is no Cherry Hill, guys. After lunch I walked back up to the Arden and did a little reading in my room. I also listened a bit to Radio One. The BBC has five radio stations, numbered One through Five, each targeted to a different audience. Radio One is the most broad-based of the lot, encompassing cooking shows (on the radio?), nature talks, interviews, big band standards and the latest in popular music in an eclectic swirl. Britain has very few of the commercial radio stations we have in the US, but if conditions are right -- especially at night -- the more hard- rocking and younger stations from Amsterdam and Copenhagen can be heard. The infamous Radio Caroline, an illegal transmitter in international waters which kept London supplied with punk music after the BBC banned it, was off the air for good and I was sorry I'd missed it. Around 15.30 I headed back out to get my Highland Pass at the train station. For £60, the Pass would allow me unlimited rail transport throughout Scotland. I walked to the Gardens and headed down the escalator into Waverely Station. It was remarkable. Waverely is a major rail station but so cleverly hidden under translucent green roofs and planted embankments in the old drained loch that it is barely noticeable from the top. The station building is a Victorian beauty forty feet underground, with wrought iron doodads and decorative trim and a huge leaded glass dome to let in the light. I stopped and watched the arrivals and departure board, a marvel of little numbers and letters in constant motion as the times and tracks were updated. There seemed to be a train leaving Edinburgh every minute or so, headed for practically every place in Scotland with a name. Hoards of people swirled around me, hauling luggage and bicycles and other paraphernalia. It was an impressive scene, and explained why the British airports are so moribund. You can take the train! I felt like Jimmy Stewart arriving at Union Station in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, gawking at everything like a rube. So this is a train station! I got my Highland Pass at the ticket window and changed £200 of traveller's checks. Along with the Pass I got a book which gave the schedules of all the trains in Scotland, a book which I threw away after ten minutes because it was totally incomprehensible. On the way out of the station, I stopped in a little newsstand and bought The Throwback by Tom Sharpe. I had recently read an article in the Washington Post about Sharpe, whose books had not yet been published in the US and who apparently was either very funny or very sick, depending on your point of view. Coming up out of the station, I found that just a little bit west on Princes Street was the Waverely Market, a collection of boutiques and gift shops hidden, like the station, under ersatz topiary. One shop in particular caught my eye -- it sold nothing but single-malt whiskies! At least 150 different brands, most of which I'd ever heard of, beckoned to me. Overwhelmed by the choice, I decided to wait until later in my visit to splurge on any. It was a pretty afternoon, but ominous clouds started moving in as I crossed over to Old Town. Just behind the Daily Scotsman building, I found a little winding street, Cockburn Street, which seemed to be the fashion center of Edinburgh. Little trendy clothes boutiques and punk fashion shops occupied the first floors of buildings dating from the 1400s. One shop, the Cavern, only sold Beatle clothing -- Edwardian jackets, hat-glasses, wigs, high- heeled pointy shitkicker boots. There were punks on the streets of Edinburgh, but they were more colorful than menacing. I got the impression, after watching one of them with purple hair and a belt apparently made of anchor chain pose for an American tourist with Mom and Buddy and Sis, that the Midlothian Chamber of Commerce probably hired them to lend a touch of British menace to the landscape. Running off the Royal Mile were a number of little alleys, called "closes." One of them, Anchor Close, was where the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica was published in 1754. The closes were dark and damp, shadowed by tall buildings black with age, but they are also kind of charming. Most were little more than community stairways linking bigger streets. Every one had some kind of plaque commemorating something that happened there. I tried to imagine what these closes were like 200 years ago, when sewage ran in the streets and people tossed the contents of their chamberpots out the upstairs windows after a perfunctory call of "Gardyloo!," a corruption of the French "gardez l'eau" -- "Look out for the water!" The buzz from my lunchtime beer had worn off, so I went looking for another bar. Just off the Royal Mile, I found a place called Merz's. The bar was in the basement but the ground floor of the building had been removed, so the bar had a thirty-foot ceiling with picture windows facing out on the street fifteen feet up. The bartender was trying to impress a buxom blonde with tales of his new Jaguar while I sipped my Tartan and watched my watch tick slowly towards 18.00, my self-appointed dinner time. I was not impressed with Merz's menu and left shortly after 6 to find a nice place to eat. I found it in Jackson Close. Jackson's was a small, elegant but not stuffy restaurant up a flight of stairs. I was greeted at the door by Lynne the maitre d', a Scottish dream, tall, blonde and archly beautiful. I was the only customer at Jackson's that night. "Is this your first time in Edinburgh?" she asked. Her voice was a much softer burr, almost English. I allowed that it was my first visit anywhere. "Well, we'll have to treat you right, then." I was shown to a small table next to a window, the lace curtains fluttering in the evening breeze. My meal was magnificent. I started with a salmon spread and shrimp on bread, sweet and tart and perfect. My main course was steak au pouvre, done perfectly with cracked peppercorns and a slight sweetness. I finished up with a salad and some cheesecake. Jackson's had done themselves proud. I told Lynne I would be back soon. Feeling slow and comfy, I wandered back to the Arden and had a Laphroiag in the bar. At 21.00, I called my mother in Seattle, a call arranged before we both left home. It was 1 PM in Seattle, and it occurred to me that Mom and I were almost an entire planet apart. It sounded that way, too. The phone in the lobby of the Arden was old and scratchy, made all the worse by the £5 premium the desk clerk, a beautiful young lady in a black dress, made me pay to use it. I could barely hear Mom, so we exchanged a few pleasantries and she promised to call me at noon Sunday in Tobermory. As I hung up, I stumblingly asked the desk clerk for a date and was roundly defeated. I was never any good at that stuff. Retiring to my room, I was up until midnight reading The Throwback. The Post was right -- Sharpe is a sick man, but also extremely funny. The humor in the book was so weird and black that I couldn't put it down. Radio One played as I drifted off to sleep.
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