Ahh, Edinburgh

Thurs 1st September

My first impressions of Edinburgh weren't great, I have to confess: too much a tourist town, tarted up like The Rocks in Sydney, was initially what I thought. I've scratched the surface and seen a little more now, although most of what I've down has been the tourist thing.

I arrived in Edinburgh at about 2pm on Thursday 1st September, after a train trip which included such sights as a ruined tower around which a golf course had sprung up, and whose soundtrack was Belle and Sebastian's Push Barman To Open Old Wounds album (featuring the highly appropriate lyrics "Get out of the city and into the sunshine" from the song 'Legal Man').

After checking into a backpackers in the Royal Mile called Brodies 2 (not especially gay-friendly I have to say: their free internet terminal had blocked the words 'gay and 'lesbian' to stop people looking for porn, but which also meant I coulddn't look up any gay venues; considering my editor Troy at MCV wants me to write a gay tourists' travel article when I get back, this was a trifle frustrating) I walked straight up to Edinburgh Castle, perched like a shag on its rock above the city. I hired one of their audio-guides, which really added to the experience. While walking all over the castle was definitely enjoyable (and my god the views!) most of the existing buildings date from a later historical period than I'm really interested in. I would have liked to heard, seen and learned more of the place in the Dark Ages and before, as opposed to the 16th-19th centuries. Oh well...

Next I went underground, on the Real Mary King's Close, a glimpse of an old part of the city, a 'close' or laneway, from the days of the Black Plague that has since been built over and lost to sight. The tour was informative, but neither as atmospheric or spooky as I'd hoped. The whole 'people sealed in to die of the plague' story I'd heard about Mary King's Close was a furphy, I was disappointed to learn.

A little later, after a few pints in a pub, I went on the 'City of the Dead Haunted Graveyard Tour', which took in a couple of locales associated with witch-burning and torture before heading off to Greyfriar's Kirkyard, best known for being the burial ground of a faithfully devoted dog, Greyfriar's Bobby (who you can read about here: http://www.greyfriarsbobby.co.uk/story/story.html)

The devoted and now dead dog was not the reason we were wandering around the graveyard late at night, of course. Our tour guide proceeded to give us some great details about the plague pits we were standing upon (there are so many people buried in the graveyard that heavy rains expose bones to this day, apparently); the bodysnatchers Burke and Hare; and then lead us towards the Covenanters Prison (covenanters were Scots Presbyterians who rejected the ecclesiastical modernisation's of King Charles I of England, and who were imprisoned and died in one corner of the churchyard) and the allegedly haunted tomb it contains. While the tour guide should be credited for trying to summon up as much atmosphere as possible, the constant glow of mobile phones as people used them as impromptu torches distracted me from his story, and shattered any atmosphere he had created. Other people seemed more succeptable to the story, and did a good job convincing themselves that the so-called MacKenzie Poltergeist was pulling their hair and generally moving about the crypt we were all squeezed into at that particular point of the tour. Read more about this particular supernatual event here: http://www.spiuk.net/casebook/ghosts_spirits/greyfriars_churchyard.htm

After that it was dinner time, and then a saunter down to the Western End of the Old Town, to a club called Citrtus, nestled at the foot of the Castle in Grindlay Street, where I danced to some indie and emo for a few hours, before getting to bed at about 2am.

Fri 2nd September

I started writing this blog entry this morning, and am updating it a few days later in London. The morning started off with a quick meeting with Paul Gudgen, the director of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, as I'm very keen (being the Deputy Chair of Melbourne Fringe) to ensure more international performers make it to our festival. It was only a quick meeting, but will hopefully lead to some more discussion in coming months.

Then I raced off for a very quick visit to the Edinburgh Museum, but I didn't do it justice, and must go back at some stage. Nonetheless I learned a little more about the prehistory of Scotland, which was nice. Nice. What an insipid word.

In retrospect I should have skipped the museum, and gone to the Francis Bacon exhibition that was on at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, but you live and learn. Maybe I can back to it before the end of my holiday...

And then, it was off to catch the 1pm London train: the Flying Scotsman!