| | Thursday I hopped a train up north past nuclear reactors in large green fields that go whizzing by the second real train ride of my life. It gets dark, so I can't stare out the window as much, which gets me down a bit but in a flash
we're in Edinburgh. I finally made it here. Not a single bit of me is Scottish, but somewhere inside wanted to see this place.
So, we all drag our bags through the darkened, empty medieval streets where a nearly full moon peaks out now and again behind blue clouds over the high stone buildings and you get the feeling it has looked this way for a long, long while.
After settling in to the hostel, the scene gets a bit to American for our brief stay in this foreign land, so Sarah and I break off to stray from the beaten path. Every crack and crevice leads to hundreds of steps winding this way and that through buildings older than my native country. On a balcony of sorts, overlooking the street, we find this quiet bistro that curiously serves up some of the best Mexican food I've had. Sometimes life throws you curves like that. Finish out with a nice quiet pub overlooking people stumbling home.
Bright and early the next day we hop a blue bus off the Royal Mile with a driver named Fergus who's wearing a kilt. Okay, now I'm in Scotland. We keep driving further outside the city into the highlands past ruined castles and monuments of stone that are the business as usual to the people of the towns that go about their daily Scottish lives. We play frisbee outside a medieval castle.Gawking at the mountains, I realize that someday I would like to live near a mountain range. Just long enough to get beyond the wide eyed stare stage. I would like to get to the point of knowing these seemingly mythical landscapes in every detail. Where they become a given, just another background detail. Because I can't get anything done when I'm just staring out the bus window.
Eat lunch on cliff face in the Isle of Skye where the green mountains go into the clouds one day. Play some more frisbee near lochs and glens of all shapes and sizes. Rebaptize myself Scottish in the waters of Loch Lomond. Get tipsy in a pub in a fishing village. Drink a lot of scotch. walk along the beach until it starts to downpour so we hop back on the bus. Drink from a stream that legend says will grant you a wish. Stay in a hostel near Loch Ness and see a lunar eclipse while walking to a pub nearby. In the morning, no nessie sightings so I skip rocks instead on a beach a few miles down from where Led Zeppelin wrote "Stairway to Heaven" at Allister Crowley's mansion. Dance around like idiots in a five thousand year old rock structure while singing drinking songs. Walk through village after village, ruin through ruin, misty Scottish landscape through misty Scottish Landscape.
I would like to be a Scot.
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| | Posted 3/9/2007 8:03 AM - 33 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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