Friday, February 27, 2009

welcome to the hotel caledonia

Couple of quick notes from our trip to Edinburgh last weekend:
  • Firstly and most importantly, photos can be found here.
  • Tourist attractions - too numerous to list, but obviously you want to see the castle, the Royal Mile, Calton Hill and its various monuments, Holyroodhouse, eat some haggis and drink some whisky (you get a free glass, too).
  • Also, climb Arthur's Seat. Geologically fascinating, great views, and an interesting climb given how relatively small it is height-wise (only 823 feet).
  • I've always been slightly dubious about Scottish beer - my experience has been generally that it's a bit dark and sweet and treacly for me. However, we sampled some nice ones over the course of the weekend - in addition to the old stalwarts like Caley 80 and Deuchars IPA there's slightly more obscure stuff like Pentland IPA, Thrappledouser, Sandy Hunter's and Blessed Thistle (made with actual thistles, apparently) to sample. All good.
  • Lastly a demonstration that even a city of great architectural beauty like Edinburgh is still a changing and evolving organism. Here are two pictures of Eduardo Paolozzi's giant foot sculpture on Leith Walk. The top one is a randomly Googled image of uncertain vintage (but not that old, I would guess), the second is one I took on Monday. Quite a difference. Also note how the scaffolding on Calton Hill has moved from being around the Dugald Stewart monument to being around the Observatory.

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