Locomotoring

So now we are a week into the Scotland vacation. Edinburgh proved to be a lovely place to babysit the jetlag. It was a bit windy at times, but not the kind that makes you hold on to your hat. It was drizzly but not the kind that soaks you. So we walked. We were staying at The Raeburn in Stockbridge. From there, we walked to museums. We walked to the Royal Mile. We walked the Royal Mile. We walked the Botanical Garden. We walked to dinner. We averaged 7 miles a day. The nicest of these were the Water of Leith walkways. It is like going into a tunnel from one point and emerging somewhere else. Except that the tunnel is a walkway by the river, it is green, only allowing humans and their dogs to walk. The river is clean enough to encourage a bird habitat – we saw herons and mallards. Houses abutted on the walkway. Restaurants too. There were sculptural points of interest.

I wasn’t quite sure what I was expecting from Edinburgh. It is an old town with beautiful stone buildings. Perhaps I was expecting to be able to take a lot of photos of rows of beautiful buildings. But that didn’t happen. Like anything old, these buildings needs a lot of upkeep. Nearly every other building facade were scaffolded. It is as if the modern life and the old stone buildings were not in congruence. The older buildings looked like rows and rows of marching soldiers, built in strict conformity to a code from a bygone era. The modern shop fronts did not share any theme. Even at the entrance to the Edinburgh Castle, was a massive steel grandstand, a temporary summer construction to allow visitors to enjoy the musical performance of Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

I was expecting the city to be touristy but found that to be the case only in the vicinity of the Edinburgh Castle and a few hotspots like the Botanical Garden or the Scottish Gallery. The rest of the city felt very laid back. The museums had a good collection of art, but they too were laid back. There was no entrance fee, no significant effort to curate the collections or tell stories, no significant presence of security, no bag checks. I could stand 2 inch from the priceless art pieces and no one cared. Every neighborhood in the city had a green space with benches. The joggers were out irrespective of rain or wind. The restaurants looked equally booked for dinner at 6:30 as they were at 8:30. Ditto for cafes. It was as if life was flowing along at its own routine pace unaware of the top 10 things to do in Edinburgh.