Edinburgh, Scotland

The ferry was larger than I had been expecting. It was sitting in port with a docile air, painted white and blue. There were at least five stories that were visible, and a promenade deck—what was this, the Titanic? All around it the sea churned, deep blue and free.

I had ridden a ferry several times, on family trips to Mackinaw Island, and when we had booked our trips on the ferry, I had been expecting one of those ferries—small, with only two or three stories, full of hard-backed chairs and cold gray floors. The grand ship in port was nothing like I had expected.

Hannah, who had never ridden in a ferry, was probably the least astounded, taking it as a matter of course that all ferries are monstrosities. She headed towards the check-in line, with the pragmatic Victoria following her, and I stumbled after them.

The check-in line was full and busy. The man in line in front of us had a little Dashound in a carry-on, and most of our other passengers had one or two suitcases of luggage. My little backpack was scanned, and I had to go through an X-Ray machine, which reminded me of airport security. A husky, large and furry, started whining at the sight of the little Dashound, who simply curled up more tightly in its cage and gave a long sigh.

We redeemed our tickets and were promptly spot-checked by the police, dressed in black with checkered caps. We all tried to show them a collective variety of our student I.D.s or our driver’s licenses, and they made a little face and said, “Do you have your passports with you?”

I handed over my little passport, and the woman looked it over, confused by my little London Heathrow stamp. “They’re all right,” another man, probably their boss, said, and our passports were returned to us and we went through the gate.

The man with the husky dog smiled at us, and the dog got up eagerly. “You can pet him, if you’d like,” he said, and eagerly Victoria and I started scratching his ears and his neck. The husky loved the attention, and immediately stood on two feet, propping its front paws around Victoria’s arm for support. Hannah gasped faintly and backed away.

For about ten minutes we waited in an upstairs room, and bought our tickets for Edinburgh Castle, which we would be visiting the next day. Eventually we saw a mass exodus headed outside, and we followed the crowd, where we found ourselves crammed onto a little bus. “They’re piling us on top of each other,” someone complained.

“They’re going to drive us into the belly of the ship,” a man said. The words struck me as vaguely ominous. All around us were cargo ships, headed up a large ramp, and we too would go up that little mound, just like cargo. Human chattel. I craned my neck to look, but the sun blinded me.

It was a short bus ride into the Stena Liner. We climbed out, and I found myself in the cargo hold, surrounded by trucks and cars. The line headed towards the stairs, and we climbed up two floors, until we found ourselves on the eighth floor.

 The eighth floor had an arcade, a restaurant, a lounge, and a cinema. We went and sat in the lounge, marveling at our surroundings. Everything was plush and carpeted and clean, like we were on a cruise ship. The t.v.s were advertising expensive Marc Jacobs products, and once or twice an employee came to our lounge and reminded us that on deck ten we could get a massage.

The ferry started moving. Victoria was taking pictures, and Hannah was lounging on a little couch like a cat. The t.v.s started playing Dark Shadows, and the time went by. It grew dark outside, and we could no longer see the sea. The water was restless, and our boat rocked gently from side to side. Hannah turned a little green.

I think I could get used to this, I thought. Maybe I could work for a ship one day. It would be an excuse to see the world, wouldn’t it? Working for a cruise ship?

At last we docked. We went down to deck seven, and found ourselves in a long metal tube that went on and on and on. The air was cold, and the only thing we could see out of the windows was a deep navy blue. I thought I could hear the sea underneath us.

At last we arrived in Scotland, and we found our bus waiting for us. We climbed on board, feeling pleased with ourselves for having orchestrated this excursion so well. Victoria settled down for a nap, and so did I. Hannah, who was sitting by the window, said, “Look at the stars! …I think I see the Big Dipper.” Then she paused and said, “Wait, do they even have that over here?”

“They do,” I said. “It’s only in Australia that they don’t, and the Southern Hemisphere.”

“I don’t ever want to go to Australia.”

“I want to go everywhere.”

I dozed uncomfortably for the next several hours. Every so often I would wake up, or come to full consciousness, and watch as we passed through a little village. Most of the journey was dark, illuminated only by the highway lights, which laid out our path before us miles into the distance. But the villages had streetlights, and we could see the shapes of the houses. I marveled at how close they looked to Irish houses, and yet, how different.

On the way to Edinburgh we stopped twice, once in a little village I do not know the name of, and once in Glasgow, for departures and on boarders. When we passed through Glasgow I was again reminded with a jolt that Belfast is not a city, in the terms the U.S. or the rest of the world would use the word. Hemmed in by the River Lagan and a chain of mountains, the remains of a bog underneath the city, there is no room to expand; in Belfast, you make the most of the space you’re given. Glasgow had no such impediments, and so it has grown fat and large. The cinemas were larger than even the biggest in Belfast, the roads winding, confusing, multi-levelled. Car parks loomed up before us, and the neon lights of city streets glowed enticingly.

“Belfast is the only city I ever liked,” Hannah said. “This is why.”

About an hour later we arrived in Edinburgh. This time we were greeted not by the new, by cinemas and car parks and HMVs, but white stone statues that glowed even in the dark, and looming buildings that had seen the Victorians come to fruition and then pass on. We got off of the bus and tried to find a taxi, but there was no ready taxi service in Edinburgh that day. The roads were all torn up, because the city is putting in trolley rails, and so the taxis that usually waited for passengers had moved on to other hunting grounds.

Victoria led us through Edinburgh. It was night, and I was worried, especially when Victoria obliviously booked past two drunken men, maybe only a few years older than us. They saw us, and nodded. “Hi,” they said, to me, and to Hannah. I wished we had stayed behind them, and let them go on without noticing us. One of the men said something, then, wobbly and hard to understand, but I thought I got the drift of what he meant, and started trying to herd our group away, which annoyed Victoria, who was not afraid of two drunken men on a dark street in a foreign city.

The men eventually turned in a different direction. Perhaps I had made up the danger after all, I thought, but I was still wary. Victoria stopped us in front of a pub called Jekyll and Hyde, and I called the taxi company. Soon the taxi came, and it took us to the Caledonian Hostel, only a few streets down, and found ourselves in our lodgings for the night.

I’d never been in a hostel before, but the employees seemed kind and welcoming. The walls were painted, mostly pink and orange, with centaurs and owls and all sorts of creatures painted on the walls. In the lounge there was a large poster and a fake aquarium, and a lot of chairs. We sat there for awhile, using the free internet and computers the hostel provided, and then went up to our room.

That night we were sharing with about ten other girls. All of the beds were bunked, and there were lockers next to each of them. I had brought a lock, and so we put our belongings in the locker there and went to sleep. People kept going in and out, though, and I found it hard to stay asleep; I kept having the reoccurring image of waking up to find someone picking the lock and taking all of my stuff.

We got up at eight, and we were actually one of the last groups to leave the room. Most people had been getting up for the past hour or two. Down in the lounge they had breakfast, of cornflakes and toast and tea, and we ate and then headed out to Edinburgh Castle. 

 I had thought it might be difficult to find, but once you get to Edinburgh, there is nothing hard about finding its castle. It stands out on a large mountain, visible for miles, and we walked quickly in that direction, past a park and all of the statues we had seen last night, of Scotsmen we had never heard of. One of the largest monuments was to Sir Walter Scott, whose statue was surrounded by a great spiraling stone building, almost like a church tower.

It was a very steep climb. Some of the streets had stone walls along the side, with hand railings put in, but it didn’t make it any easier to climb up. But the cobblestones are good grips, at least, and we made it to the gates of the castle in good time—before it had opened, actually. We looked around, and on the castle battlements there was the family crest and motto, which I recognised because my friend Felicity quotes it all of the time: Nemo me impune lacissit. Let he who would offend me beware.

We went on the castle tour, and I discovered that the castle is still actually working—but for the Scottish military. This was disappointing, because all I was getting was a history of warfare, and many of the buildings were dedicated to deceased Scottish armymen and women. I had come for history; for Mary, Queen of Scots, and her predecessors, but I learnt very little about the history of the castle.

Regardless, the castle was very beautiful. We saw the Grand Hall, which had been reworked by the Victorians, a war memorial full of books of the dead, the crown jewels, and a chapel a son had erected for his deceased mother (who later became a Catholic saint). The chapel was tiny, and our guide said it was still used for weddings—of twenty people, anyway. Hannah cleared the little arch doorway easily, and Victoria just made it, but when I stood there I found that I was at least one or two inches too tall. I had to duck inside. 

 The crown jewels was probably the best part, in terms of historical content. They were stored in the clock tower, and as we wound up there were paintings of the Stewart family and other Scottish kings and queens on the walls. The history of the jewels were also elaborated on, from their making, to their hiding, during the turbulent Middle Ages. It was here I learned why Sir Walter Scott is so admired; he helped to resurrect the ornaments, and then wrote a book about the experience.

Finally, at the top of the tower, we saw the jewels. There was a crown, sword, and orb, and a stone of rock slab that, according to the guides, is instrumental in coronating new kings. Scotland just got it back, as it has been in England for the last several years. Everyone realises, however, that it must go back to England when the new king is crowned, and they only hope they get it back afterwards.

The last place in the castle we really visited was the chamber of Mary, Queen of Scots, where she had given birth to her son, James VI of Scotland, and I of England. It was a very empty room; there was only a little marble bust commemorating Mary, and paintings on the walls of other monarchs. I was ecstatic to find myself in a place where Mary had once stood, however, even if it was an empty room.

After the castle we went to the Grassmarket, which was a sloping valley of shops. We visited the Owl and Lion, which is a store that binds their own books and was absolutely beautiful, and Christmas shops. Without Thanksgiving in the U.K., Christmas celebrations begin now—there are lights up all over Edinburgh and Glagow, as well as Belfast, and this weekend in the City Centre we’re having a Christmas festival. We spent a long time shopping, stopping for lunch at a pizza place and for dinner at a little diner-like place. The owner was Turkish, and his mum was there, with Clementines and other food. She saw us sitting there, and she came over and offered us each a Clementine. We thanked her, and her son called from the kitchen, “She doesn’t speak English!” so we just smiled and nodded at her. I hope she knew how grateful we were. 

 Now full, we went to find the Wee Red Bar, which Empire! Empire! would be playing at that night. Hannah’s friend Keith is in the band, and she wanted to go and see him again.

The Wee Red Bar was a fairly small bar. We got there early, and saw Keith’s band performing, but we waited outside. One of the Americans in the band came out and saw us waiting in the little antechamber, eating a bag of Walkers Ready Salted Crisps. “Hello,” he said, a bit surprised to see us sitting there.

“Hello,” we said back.

He went back inside, and luckily Keith came after, who brought us inside and fed us more pizza and introduced us to the band. He was absolutely ecstatic to see Hannah, and she was just as excited to see him.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay to see the band play, because we had to catch our bus to Glasgow, but we did get to see two other bands perform, the Reptilians and Smithsonian. The Reptilians were also American, but the Smithsonians were Scottish. I wish that we could have stayed to see him perform.

We went back to the bus station, and late that night found ourselves in Glasgow. They had taxis waiting outside of the station for us, and we hopped in one. Our driver was slightly ornery—my flatmates told me after the Scots have a reputation for being grumpy—and when we had trouble pronouncing the name our hostel was on, he snapped, “You maen Baalvickar straet?”

Hannah, who had pronounced it Ballvicaire street, shrugged and said, “Yes, that.”

It was the second time today we’d gotten in trouble for our pronunciation. At dinner at the Turkish restaurant, Victoria had tried to order carmel, which is not a food here, but a name.

“Caramel?” the Turkish man said in reply, genuinely confused.

“Carmel,” Victoria said back.

“Caramel?”

“CARMEL.”

“She means caramel,” I said, just to end it.

At any rate, we drove a very long way to Balvicar Street, and it cost us over 10 pound, which worried us. We climbed out, and checked in, and found that we had a room all to ourselves. There was a t.v. there (which didn’t work) and a sink, and a little kettle. The window was cracked, though, and we could not close it, so a cold winter breeze came into the room. We passed a cold night, and I slept little better than I had the night before. From the window came the sounds of laughing Spanish men.

And so we spent our first night in Glasgow. The next morning, it would be Hannah’s 21^st birthday. 

On to Chapter 2...