recap central: scotland, day three. glasgow.

wednesday, march 3rd, 2010.
Woke up at poopy hostel in Glasgow, and didn’t have too much planned for the day. I went to check out one of the galleries there, the Kelvingrove Art Gallery And Museum. It was free, which is a plus. It might also be the weirdest fucking museum I’ve ever been to. The art was whatever. The museum portion was interesting, particularly the part about Scottish history. Lots of peculiar little displays about local life, including some about women’s rights and mental disabilities. Weird. There were also huge sections with stuffed dead animals, with gangs of school kids drawing these dead animals. Also weird.

Afterwards, I walked around kind of aimlessly, on the quest for vegetarian haggis. I was suggested a place with it, but no dice. Could not find. Found another market that had it, and I sat down on the street near a bridge to eat it. It was like, pretty good, I guess, but after about half of it, I was done with it. The spices are good and all, but they’re also kinda overwhelming.

I didn’t have too much to do after that, so I just walked a whole bunch to the downtown area. I stopped by the CCA (350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow). The exhibits were MEH-ish but the people were extremely friendly! They also had a really rad performance art thing going on that evening, as a part of a really rad arts festival… but I wouldn’t be in town. Overnight bus to London. Bummer.

After hanging out, I went back towards the hostel to grab my shit, and contacted Nim’s friend, Ben. I think it was Ben. Anyway, hung out at their pad for like, forever, hanging out with his girlfriend and meeting his roommate and numerous swinging door of guests. It was quite nice. The Canadian roommate cooked me some vegetarian dinner, and it was excellent. I can see a little bit of charm in Glasgow, I guess, from people’s lives… but again… not that fun for tourists.

I headed out a bit early to pick up my bags from the hostel and to go to the bus station. Woo, overnighter to London. Megabus. Word up.

recap central: scotland, day two. edinburgh & glasgow.

tuesday, march 2nd, 2010.
Woke up, checked out of my hostel, and left the bag there for a while so I could go explore. Just walked around and headed downtown.

First stop: tour booth so I could get a map to find out how to get to the Contemporary Art Museum, because it was so far from the City Center that no maps had it on there! Yay! There was a #15 bus that ran to it, but fuck that… it was only like a two-mile walk, so I did that shit. The main strip of downtown Edinburgh is like everyone, full of world-wide chain retail stores (see photo). Boring. Keep walking.

So, the Gallery Of Modern Art and the Dean Gallery (75 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DR) are across the street from each other. This is in the lawn of the Dean Gallery. I LOVE IT!

The Dean Gallery had one really, really amazing thing in it. It was the reproduction of one guy’s entire former studio, put together with his help before he died or something. Really amazing. I forget who the artist is at the moment. Will fill in the blank later.

Entrance to the Museum Of Modern Art.

I don’t remember anything from the Modern Art Museum off the top of my head that really stuck. Oh yeah. There was one thing where there were a bunch of portraits of famous people, and their eyeballs were cut out, and they were set on mirrors. So when you matched up your eyes to the mirror holes, it looked like you were looking into the reflection of said famous person. Kinda neat.

Above-ground cemetery. I think it had a sign saying that only family members could go to it, or something.

I took the bus back, and I ate at Jimmy Chung’s Bar And Chinese Buffet 17 Waverley Bridge Edinburgh EH1 1BQ). The notion just really, really amused me. And it was fun. There was an OK amount of vegetarian options, but it was mostly a shit ton of chicken, which was too bad, cause some of it looked pretty delicious. Ah, well. I mostly liked the idea of eating Chinese food in Scotland, but actually, THERE ARE A SHIT TON OF CHINESE PEOPLE IN EDINBURGH. It’s truly mind-blowing, and other people I spoke to about it noted it as well. Guess there are just a lot of Chinese people in the UK in general. Veird. Or not veird. I dunno. But Edinburgh especially felt mind-blowingly Chinese.

I walked around aimlessly for a while. I had time to kill before taking the bus to Glasgow.

Classy.

Before I went to the bus station (where they wouldn’t let me catch an earlier bus, godamnit), I stopped by The Fruitmarket Gallery (45 Market Street, Edinburgh, Scotland EH1 1DF, United Kingdom). It has a small, but very nice, bookstore, and had an OK architectural-type exhibit going on. Mostly cool, mostly for the book store, though. I found a buncha stuff I woulda bought, but ended up buying a book on Muslim art. Cause that shit is awesome!

Good ol’ snags from the bus shops in Edinburgh. Cadbury rules the UK. It’s owned by Hershey’s, I think, in the States, but not over there. Good thing Hershey’s is not as evil as Nestle, so I can still eat it!

Uh, so, I dunno where I put my Glasgow pics, but I haven’t uploaded them yet. There aren’t many. But I got into Glasgow pretty late in the evening, and I took a cab to my hostel, Glasgow Youth Hostel (8 Park Terrace, Glasgow). It’s in kind of an inconvenient part of town… well, kinda. There’s lots of crap around it, but it’s in a university neighborhood and isn’t the main downtown area. Anyway. The cab driver was REALLY nice. I told him I was only there for an evening, and that I had never been in a black cab before, and he took me on a mini-tour in his car and made sure that my price remained the same. He was sooooooooo nice. Also, as we were getting out, he insisted on taking photos of me riding in the driver’s seat of his black cab. Which is really awesome! That never happens! He was so cute and old and nice!! He also confessed he knows nothing about technology and doesn’t care to. It was cute. I dunno.

I got in pretty late and immediately went off to Nice N Sleazy to see a show. It was only a few blocks from my hostel, which is nice. I was warned by the cab driver not to walk up one particular road on my way back to the hostel. Apparently, one side of this park is kinda dangerous, and it’s better to walk on the streets. Anyway, the lineup for the show: dd/mm/yyyy, Mice, Macbre Scene! There were a lot of shows there that evening, but dd/mm/yyyy was the only appealing one to me, even though I didn’t actually know who they were at the time. I just knew they had opened for These Arms Are Snakes, and that alone was enough for me to go see them. And they were AMAZING! I made sure to talk to them after the show to see if they might be interested in having us cover them at SxSW. That did end up working out, and it was all good times. But great show. Mice was pretty good as well. I missed Macbre Scene. Nonetheless, it was a little weird going to the show by myself, but there were a lot of awkward stragglers such as myself. The venue was weird, though. There were a lot of chairs, so a lot of people sat. A lot of people also left after the opening acts played. In-ter-est-ing.

Sleep. The bathrooms were pretty fucking filthy, which was weird considering there wasn’t really anyone in the hostel. They also required that you pay for WiFi (actually, this was a pattern in a lot of Glasgow… really hard to find free WiFi). I wouldn’t recommend this hostel. Hell, I wouldn’t recommend Glasgow, really. I only went there because Nim had lived there and said it was cool. I’m sure it’s pretty awesome if you live there because there’s a thriving music and arts scene, but as a tourist, without friends in Glasgow, it’s pretty fecking boring.

recap central: scotland, day one. edinburgh.

monday, march 1st, 2010.
Let me just start by saying that I hate hate hate how Edinburgh is spelled Edinburgh but really pronounced Edinburough.

Anyway. I stayed a Budget Backpackers Hostel in Edinburgh. Dude. Edinburgh is QUITE the fucking tourists’ place, man. It’s the first place I traveled to during this one-month-almost European vacation that was shit crammed full of people. It was kinda weird, actually. But anyway.

I got to the hostel at like, ten in the morning or something, and tried to check in, but it was too early. They gave me a locker and I was on my merry way. I was to entertain myself in Edinburgh for a day and a half, and it was about a good amount of time. Probably could have done two days, but it’s fine. It’s an adorable little city, with adorable little winding cobblestone streets and lots of old brick buildings. It’s great. It has a very nice, very unique vibe, and it’s absolutely compact and walkable.

Funny little shop, which was one of the first shops I saw in Edinburgh. See pig in window.

Ate lunch at this tiny little vegetarian-ish cafe which turned out to be quite not tasty. I hate when that happens. It happens a lot.

Onto the Edinburgh Castle.

Welcoming statue.

I was not that into the Edinburgh Castle. I’ve seen a shit ton of castles in my time (:P) and it was just kinda boring. Yawn. And it’s small. There was some historical stuff in this one museum that started becoming really interesting, but then………………… I dropped Lenny’s laptop. I was borrowing Lenny’s tiny aluminum Dell laptop on my trip, and all was going fine, and it was great and convenient to have, but then I dropped it. And that was really quite, quite souring. It was in the middle of a mini-museum, with a family around watching me botch it. I knew I shouldn’t have been carrying it around like that, but, sigh. I soon bought some postcards so I could get a decent bag to throw the laptop in, but I really should have done that earlier.

In any case, here are some pictures from the museum in which I dropped the laptop.

Some guy who fought in war with a baby in his backpack.

Some cool paper war cut-out things.

View from one of the rooms of the castle.

Anyway, so I retreated out of that fucking place and looked for a place with WiFi to see if I could freaking talk to Lenny about what I had done. Luckily, I got in touch with him… and I had to buy something to use the WiFi, so…

Lunch, part two. When the people there tried to give me the WiFi password, I couldn’t get it right, either, because I can’t freaking understand Scottish people!!!!

Right after, I went to the Camera Obscura Museum (549 Castlehill, Edinburgh EH1 2ND, United Kingdom). I’ve never seen a Camera Obscura before, but there was an M.C. Escher print or something on the advertisements for this place, and it looked right up my trippy alley. Twas, twas. It was pretty neat, and probably one of the more entertaining and interesting things I did in the UK. Oh, by the way, if you’ve never seen a Camera Obscura in real life, I highly suggest you go check one out. There’s only a few in the world, but they’re pretty amazing.

Lightning rods. Is that what they’re called? Something like that.

Some kind of mirror that wasn’t a mirror. I forget.

Cool giant kaleidoscope thing.

Just some mirrors which stretch these neon tubes onto infinity.

Mangling myself in funhouse mirrors.

Really awesome holograms. Boy George!!!!!!!! He looked so real. And oh yes. His androgyny is attractive, indeed.

Candy hologram

This one’s kind of halfway between transitions from human to feline.

Just another mirrored wall stretching into infinity. This one was really quite beautiful.

After that, I left and headed back to the hostel to check in. This hostel was a fucking party hostel. Two guys were at the front counter, chatting up this gang of girls. One of them kept bragging about how he was STILL drunk from the previous night. Which is soooooooooooooo lame. After I checked in, he told me that they were going out for a PubCrawl later that evening.

When I first walked into my room at the hostel, I literally said out loud, “What the fuck!” because the room looked empty. Turns out there were people sleeping in it. Haha. So I had said that outloud for no reason. One of the girls introduced herself from her bunk and kinda scared me, and apologized for being messy. It was her birthday. They were Irish, and five of them (I think it was five) had come from Dublin (? was it Dublin? Maybe. No, I don’t think it was.) to celebrate. Yadda, yadda.

The room was like this………………………….. but with food and stuff, and this was only half of the room… I got out of there, stat.

Just some buildings near the hostel which I really took a fancy to.

Especially this one <3

What was I doing for the evening? I went to this local coffeeshop Nim had recommended, called The Forest (3 Bristo Place, Edinburgh EH1 1EY, United Kingdom). It was fucking grimy. Haha. Super hippie coffeeshop that was dirty as hell. I got some tomato soup, and it came with whole wheat bread and was OK at best. I think it was vegan, maybe. Either way. But it did have WiFi, and it did have one room of people making postcards, which was cool. I probably should have participated just to meet some local people, but I wasn’t in the mood to care and just wanted to internet it up. So internet it up I did, and I decided, after much deliberation, to go on a “ghost tour” that evening. Edinburgh has a shit ton of them. I did a shit ton of research but ended up going with Mercat Ghost Tours. I picked the one that sounded the “scariest” — which is hard to come by, really, because most of them aren’t supposed to be scary. But since I believe in that kinda shit a bit, it’s all that much more scary, I guess. My package: The Ghosthunter. Synopsis, below:

Our late night ghost walk will truly spill the spine. Your cloaked guide will reveal Edinburgh’s……..

• most heinous, despicable crimes
• most gruesome, bloodthirsty punishments
• most feared, malevolent ghosts.

On the Ghosthunter we will explore the terrible secrets no other tour would dare mention. All the stories are plucked from the very depths of Edinburgh’s history and the truth is far more chilling than anything fictional….

Become a member of the Edinburgh Mob as you hear of a truly horrible punishment which tortured its victim for days; Find out what horrible secret lies within Princes Street Gardens; Walk down eerie closes, renowned for supernatural occurences and even a poltergiest.

As the tour continues, tremble at tales of the spirits who haunt the dark closes of the Royal Mile, and then shiver as you descend into the infamous Blair Street Vaults. Deep in the candlelit underground chambers, hear of the inexplicable experiences and restless spirits that have tormented visitors over the years. Will you be one of their victims? Join us if you dare.

We recommend this tour for adults due to the darker content and adult themes. Some of the tales are truly gruesome so you will need a strong stomach. The vaults are darker on this tour so make sure you have good footwear and steady nerves!

Tour Details

TOUR GUIDE	This tour has all the essential ingredients to make it a winner. Wonderful!
VISITOR COMMENTS	The storytelling was brilliant: felt like we’d joined a play! Couldn’t have been better.
TOUR TIMES	Summer (April – September): 9.45pm, 10.30pm (Thursday, Friday & Saturday and throughout August) Winter (October – March): 9.45pm
DURATION	1 hour 30 minutes
TICKETS	£9.00 adults, £7.50 concessions
START	Mercat Cross, High Street
FINISH	Blair Street Vaults, Blair Street
BOOK

Anyway.

I stopped by the hostel to drop off my laptop before heading back out to the tours. Party-on guy at the front desk saw me. Conversation went like this:

Party-On Guy: You’re not going out?
Me: Nah, I don’t really drink.
Party-On Guy: What do you DO then?
Me: I don’t know? Stuff?

How are you supposed to answer that question? It’s hard to answer because it’s so inane. Sorry, my friend, if you need to drink all the time to have fun, or let loose, or whatever the fuck, but I don’t.

Anyway. Walked to the ghost tour, but I had some time to spare, so I went on a mini photo shoot of late night Edinburgh. It was nice, but my toes were freezing off and going numb. I didn’t really expect that beyond Iceland, but it wasn’t warm in the UK, no no… although compared to Iceland, it was, I guess.

Anyway, the tour was actually pretty fun, despite being “cheesy”. Mostly it was couples. There was one other lone Asian girl wearing the most horrible outfit. She had on like… some kind of weird Chinese jacket thing that was pretty thick, in one outrageous colored pattern (think it was some kind of bright-colored blue). Then she wore a similarly outlandishly patterned pants, in pink. It was crazy. She was from China, of course, studying in London, and wanting to renew her visa in Edinburgh. I ran into her the next day, where she relayed that she couldn’t renew her visa in Edinburgh because apparently, Scotland is a different country than England. Shit, dawg, I coulda told you that @__@

Anyway.

The tour guide was very, very funny and the stories she told were interesting. But I don’t really remember. And I didn’t see anything, despite really wanting to and taking a million pictures. While we were initially lining up, some girl from an earlier tour came over with her boyfriend and had a camera which supposedly caught some ghosts or something… which is pretty cool, but I didn’t get to see the photos. The tour guides told her to send it in. It seems they have no real doubts in their mind as to whether or not they believe in ghosts; all the guides seem to, definitely.

One of the stories I just remembered that the guide told was that there’s a lady who supposedly really hates men in the tunnels underneath the city. The tunnels were previously artist studios and spaces, but because ventilation was bad or something, people stopped going. It was taken over by thieves and prostitutes and stuff. Anyway, supposedly there’s a lady who cries down there and really hates women and even moreso hates women who are pregnant, and this ghost supposedly pushed the tour guide when she was pregnant, and she took a leave for a long time after. Then one time, she brought her baby or something into the underground and something bad happened, too. Mer? I forget.

Another story is about how there is supposedly a shoe cobbler in one of the corners, so the tour guide tells everyone to show the cobbler their shoes. I tried to show him my velcro shoes, because velcro is awesome, man!

Ah, the pleasant streets of Edinburgh.

That was about it for that day. Oh yeah, I came back and talked to my Italian roommate — forget his name — from Sicily for a good while. He was working in Edinburgh — formerly as a tour guide, but then he got laid off or something. He was looking for a job. He was funny. Totally Italian, with everything being the best and love and etc. He got really happy when talking about Italian food, but also mentioned that people in Sicily are really lazy. He also said that everyone takes holidays at the same times of year and can’t really take any other days off. Which is why, when we went to Italy on the week everyone takes vacation, nothing at all was open. It’s interesting, anyway, but he definitely stressed that people in Sicily are content to do nothing. And that there’s no good Italian food in Edinburgh. To be expected, I guess.