Edinburgh reminds me of Ottawa in many ways. It’s not the largest city in the coun­try (pop­u­la­tion less than half a mil­lion), but it’s the cap­i­tal, and serves as the finan­cial hub of Scotland. The accents here are very sub­tle and quite posh. Save for the old archi­tec­ture and some­what angu­lar roads, it looks like many Western cities.

Arthur’s Seat is a group of hills that pop up from the hori­zon, high above the city, an is vis­i­ble from my bed­room win­dow. It serves as a visu­al cue for Edinburgh, and when trav­el­ing out­side, one can always look to Arthur’s Seat to see how far (or close) one is to home.

Atop Arthur’s Seat, over­look­ing part of Edinburgh.

Continue read­ing “Scotland, Day 4: Edinburgh”…

Dennis tells me it’s the cold­est Scottish sum­mer in recent mem­o­ry, hov­er­ing around 14°C with the skies filled with rain. Luckily, I did­n’t come here for the weath­er, came for the views. It’s won­der­ful­ly chilly in the house, just the way I like it cause I can swad­dle myself in warm blan­kets (and mine is also an elec­tric).

We took a short trip in the after­noon and head­ed east along the coast, mak­ing stops at small towns. It seems like there’s always anoth­er in almost every direc­tion, most with pop­u­la­tions bare­ly sur­pass­ing 1000. It’s nice to see a healthy amount of trees and foliage, not to men­tion such beau­ti­ful bod­ies of water. Paris is so urban that I nev­er even wor­ried about bugs.

Aberlady from a dis­tance.

Continue read­ing “Scotland, Day 3: Edinburgh to North Berwick”…

My vaca­tion has final­ly begun, marked by a chance to do some laun­dry after sweat­ing in the same five sets of clothes for the last 10 days. I tend to trav­el to put myself out of my com­fort zone, but that’s impos­si­ble here with Dennis tak­ing care of me. I offer to lend a hand in any way I can, but he refus­es my help cause he takes plea­sure in tak­ing care of his guests. I’d feel guilty or behold­en to him if I was­n’t the same way, but I under­stand, so I hap­pi­ly sur­ren­der myself to his hos­pi­tal­i­ty.

I’m here on a clean break, on my own terms, a detox of the mind and heart and lungs, with absolute­ly no plans at all. I know that as long as I have Dennis for com­pa­ny, I’ll have a great time.

 

Continue read­ing “Scotland, Day 2: Edinburgh”…

On the plane, I won­dered whether I should con­tin­ue my jour­ney to Scotland after work­ing so hard in France. After all, it’s been too long with­out my kit­ty, my famil­iar bed, and my gui­tar. I knew I’d made the right deci­sion as soon as I saw Dennis greet­ing me with his arms open at the bag­gage claim. There’s no bet­ter feel­ing than some­one pick­ing you up at the air­port.

Layover in Heathrow. Terminal 5 is the newest addi­tion and very mod­ern, even with loung­ing couch­es where many peo­ple take their shoes off and sleep.

Continue read­ing “Scotland, Day 1: Edinburgh”…