Saturday 30 March 2002, 1800
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I went out to the grocery store in the morning and bought omlette ingredients. Catherine diced, and I made omlettes for everyone. They were good.
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The Scottish National Monument on Calton Hill. |
Catherine and Evelyn went out to buy beauty care products and visit the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Frank took me on a very long walk through a bunch of places in town I wanted to see with a couple of his ideas thrown in. We started with a walk through the New Town including down Thistle Street. Thistle is the architectural mirror of Rose St., but it's not the business zone Rose is. Then we looked at a kirkyard (church yard, graveyard) at the foot of Calton Hill, our next destination. Calton Hill has several monuments, including the National Monument which is an incomplete duplicate of the Parthenon, started and ended a couple centuries ago.
From Calton Hill we headed toward the Royal Mile. We stopped at one of Frank's favourite pubs, The Bow Bar on Grassmarket. He had a beef pie and an 80 (beer), and I had a shot of Glenfarclas (because my book gives it a high rating). Very smooth, almost delicate. I also got a pack of "roast beef and mustard" crisps. Potato chips - and yes, that was really the flavour. He followed the 80 up with a Guinness, and I had a shot of Ardbeg (recommended by the Odd Bins store clerk, since I liked Lagavulin). Rather more raw, both in smell and taste, with a classic peaty Islay aftertaste. I didn't like it much.
Our next stop was the Greyfriar's Kirkyard, home to the grave of Greyfriars Bobby - a terrier that guarded his policeman owner's grave for ten years centuries ago. It was an educational visit - the dog's grave had dozens of flowers, none of the others did. The graves are huge, ornate, old, and moldy green. And there was a wedding at the church - with about 15 guys in kilts! We'd seen guys in kilts, but never in any concentration.
From the kirkyard to the Whisky Heritage Center to buy my Talisker's Distiller's Edition for £35. Then a little down the Royal Mile, and back here.
Oops. Somewhere in there we detoured through Waverly Station, the main train station. Nice station.
Haggis dinner tonight. Hurray! Frank bought it at a local butcher and is cooking it for us.
We interupt this diary to bring you a news flash: the Queen Mother died at 1515 this afternoon, age 101, in her sleep.
Great dinner - classically Scottish. Neeps and tatties, and two kinds of haggis - regular and vegetarian. Catherine and Evelyn had the latter - Evelyn ate it because her doctor told her no liver while she's pregnant. I really liked the haggis. The flavour reminded me a little of pate, and the texture is quite distinctive, mostly barley. Neeps are turnips, mashed, and tatties are potatoes, also mashed.
We encountered a rather bizarre issue today: Daylight Saving Time starts tonight here. It starts next weekend in North America, but a week earlier here. Good thing we found out: it would have been bad to miss our flight tomorrow!
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