Books & Brews: A "secret" bar and some expert readers' advisory

One of our traveling companions had heard about an Edinburgh bar with a variety of unique drinks. Our last night together, we set out to visit Panda & Sons (a bar disguised as a barber shop, complete with a secret door). Joyfully, Ryan had joined our merry band by this point.

Group shot in front of the Panda & Sons inside door. I totally want one for my house!

As a librarian, I also loved Panda & Sons' book-themed menus (with chapters detailing different "genres" of cocktails. Hee-hee.)

Presenting The Birdcage.

Meghan was the most adventurous, choosing the legendary Birdcage for her first drink and the Tiki Takeaway for her second. I had a slightly more traditional version of a margarita, an Amor Joven, which was rimmed with smoked paprika, followed by a Raisin the Stakes.

With our second round of cocktails (and a boring beer for Ryan).

Perusing the menu "chapters". 

In other (book) shop talk, I'm coming home with three recommendations for British crime series thanks to our tour driver Lindsay (a retired Glaswegian police officer).

• DCI Lorimer series by Alex Gray (set in Glasgow) 
• Bob Skinner series by Quintin Jardine (set in Edinburgh) 
• Roy Grace series by Peter James (set in Sussex, England) 

Suddenly I saw this woman charging at me

William Playfair's sculpture of Queen Victoria atop the Royal Scottish Academy on a cloudy Edinburgh morning. 

After an overcast morning in Edinburgh reminiscent of our first trip to Scotland in 2012, the sky cleared into a brilliant cyan which seemed to make the buildings pop.

Like Elizabeth, I felt like I was experiencing a completely different city than the one we saw six years ago on our first visit – even from my first few hours that day. 

Some flowers in the Princes Street Garden with buildings of historic Old Town in the background. 

So there I was enjoying my first sunny hours in Edinburgh and taking some photos of a façade when out of the corner of my eye, I see this woman running toward me. I started to step back to let her pass, then realized that she looked familiar. Really familiar.

The reunion on the streets of Edinburgh. (Photo credit: Alyse Kittner.)

Elizabeth and her group stopped the taxi when they saw me on their way to tea at the Palace of Holyrood House. While they ate their dainty finger sandwiches and enjoyed their Earl Greys and “Vanilla Toffee Treat” teas, I walked up to the ridge of Arthur’s Seat to check out a wide-angle view of the city.

At the Holyrood Palace cafe's tea. 

A shot of the Scottish Parliament building early on my climb up Arthur's Seat. 

As a bonus, we even saw the arrival of His Grace The Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, who was staying at the palace from May 15-26. (It’s a good thing we toured Holyrood the first time we were in Scotland because the palace was closed for His Grace’s stay.)

VIPs unloading in front of Holyrood Palace. 

One of the guards in traditional garb at Holyrood Palace. 

Sign of the day: Irony edition

Or perhaps this should be filed under "defiance edition."

Outside of a shop in the Stockbridge area of Edinburgh. 

Surprisingly sunny Scotland

This year's trip has an added wrinkle - Ryan and I are taking separate excursions for the Scotland leg of the trip.

I have joined some friends for an Outlander themed tour, while Ryan is hiking, photographing, and talking to strangers in pubs to his heart's content.

That meant I spent Thursday in Edinburgh, and I got to see some beautiful sites that I missed during our 2012 trip because it poured down rain all three days.

I also was surprised to learn that Edinburgh is built around two extinct volcanoes, at Castle Rock (site of Edinburgh Castle) and Arthur's Seat (a peak that towers over Holyrood House).

Below are some sunny shots from Calton Hill and Victoria Street (supposedly the inspiration for Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter series).

And for contrast, here was our shot of the Scottish parliament in 2012:

It's a tree, it's a harbor, no, it's parliament

Window designs to lawmakers' offices look like whale fins or Scottie dogs or hammers ... but might actually represent curtains being opened to shine in the light.

What do they represent? You decide. 

Chairs in the public galleries resemble profiles of people or perhaps thought bubbles or even question marks.

The people/thoughts/question marks overlook the desks of lawmakers on the  Parliament floor. 

The skylights in the main lobby look like leaves from the outside but they appear to be more like boats when you look up from underneath. Or maybe they are actually eyeballs keeping watch?

So many of the details and design elements of the Scottish Parliament evoke basic elements of the nation's culture as well as open and transparent government -- often simultaneously.

As someone who studies government and politics for a living, I enjoy seeing how different centers of power operate. But in the Scottish Parliament, the legislative body is trumped by its skin.

The Scots formed the rough equivalent of their own state government as part of the Scotland Act of 1998. This reconstitution, starting with parliament, also gave them the rare chance to put a modern twist to stuffy old government buildings. In a public design contest, they chose the plans of Spanish architect  Enric Miralles Moya whose blueprints were rich with symbolism of open government, Scottish heritage, and subtleties that allows for wide interpretations.

The model of the building below shows how the buildings in the foreground look like ships bumping into each other in the harbor. At the top of the photo, you can see the concrete structures that look like a tree trunk growing from the ground. That's to represent the Scots' ties to the land. And the people are represented in the office building (lower right only partly in the picture), which looks like a tenement house.

Not your average capitol building. 

The building relies on natural light and has a ton of windows further underscoring the whole transparency theme. And while we didn't get to see the legislators' offices, our guide explained that each of them have their own "think pods," which are odd-shaped sitting areas with a window. Kind of like cubbyholes for adults.

Another key feature is the art. One exhibit showed sentences written by 100 notable Scottish women about a woman they admired and it was cast in their own handwriting by the artist.

A mix of style, tone and subjects of some of the sentences in the piece. 

So the Scots have a cool house of government but that doesn't mean they've escaped the embarrassing scandals that comes with politics. For instance, one of the Scottish Members of Parliament got kicked out of his party after not disclosing to the Scottish Nationalist Party on his candidate application that he faced accusations of domestic abuse from his three previous wives. He refused to resign his seat and now serves as an independent.

Strangers on a train

Ah, the train. It’s a lovely way to see the country, catch a quick refreshing nap and catch up with the news.

Scotland offers wonderful views in between its ancient and majestic cities. These views often featured lots of sheep.

Those specs of white are sheep. The paper is in the reflection. This pretty much captures the first leg of the trip from Edinburgh to York.

At one point we also saw the shape of a woman being built into the land – her face and um … bra jetting out of the landscape. A local on the train pointed it out and said a rich landowner is having it sculpted onto his property for some reason. (Sorry, we weren’t quick enough with the camera to get a snapshot).

But the best part of the train is getting to talk with people.

We met a lovely couple from Wiltshire -- Peter and Kit Tate, who shared our booth on the train.

Our new friends kept us company on the train. 

Mr. Tate, a Briton, turned 17 in time to serve on a ship bound for the South Pacific in World War II, where he would spend some evenings sitting in brand new jeeps from the United States. After the war, he knocked on the door of the Range Rover plant and got himself a job painting the undercarriages with gray rust-proof paint. He then worked as a salesman of women’s undergarments, although he said his mother was never quite pleased with him travelling across England for the job, preferring instead to tell visitors he was an engineer like his father. A mystery enthusiast and fellow Columbo fan, Mr. Tate offered numerous recommendations for movies.

His wife, Kit Tate, is an American whose father, a Russian immigrant, was co-author of the Ellery Queen chronicles that were stories in the 1930s then became radio programs in the ‘40s. Mrs. Tate is now a modern day Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, having grown up in the Constitution State and becoming an English citizen 11 years ago when she married Peter Tate. The two met while Mr. Tate was working as a custodian in a museum north of Stonehenge while Kit was visiting with her brother on holiday. Both Kit and Peter had lost their spouses years before.

They were wonderful company and taught us a few new phrases, such as “carrying coal to Newcastle” – meaning doing something unnecessary, considering Newcastle was known for its mining. Cheers to the Tates. 

The tennis is all the rage

Wimbledon was the main talking point over here on Sunday. The newspapers had several full pages of coverage (even bigger than the Herald-Leader's UK-UofL basketball coverage). Just about every pub had a sign advertising the match, and we particularly liked these two as our signs of the day:

The pub where we watched it, the White Horse on the Royal Mile, was a little more low key.

We got there just as Andy Murray lost the second set and there were only four other people in the bar watching the match. By the end, the place was full, and several people just popped their heads in to check the score.

We were disappointed that Murray lost, but thought his speech after the match was rather brilliant. Ryan has stolen his "I'm getting closer" line at least three times since.

Then the pub lost its power, and we were forced to seek sustenance elsewhere. Bringing us to the beer of the day. We returned to the Turkish cafe where we warmed up on Saturday to try the food. I had a goat cheese and tomato salad, while Ryan had a spinach and cheese pastry dish called borek that was delicious. He paired that with a Turkish beer called Efes that he liked even though it was a pilsner.

Drinking Efes from "our table". We had the same waiter too, prompting an interesting conversation about the differences between Edinburgh, Turkey (where he spends half the year) and Virginia (where he had recently visited). 

Great Scot: The natives love the author and antiquarian Sir Walter Scott. He romanticized Scotland, and recovered the long-lost Honours of Scotland (the Crown Jewels that had been hidden in Edinburgh Castle to keep them from Oliver Cromwell). Scott's monument in his native Edinburgh is hugely impressive.

The Walter Scott monument. 

The devotion somewhat confounds both Ryan and myself. Each of us tried to read Ivanhoe in middle school and failed. It's actually the first book I remember not being able to finish - back then I was too young to realize the life is too short to struggle with boring books. Or ones with grammatical mistakes on page 1.

Ryan trying to determine if the monument's elaborate carved figures are characters from Scott's books. Hard to do when you didn't finish the book.

But I have vowed to give Scott another shot on the way home, having downloaded Waverly to the Kindle. As the New York Times noted this week, Scott's novels were also extremely popular in America, particularly before the Civil War. And thanks to the article, I finally know what happened Ivanhoe, too.


Photo of the day: Ryan and I really wish we could share a picture without a dull gray sky - but the weather has not cooperated a bit. Much of Scotland and part of England is dealing with significant rain and flooding at the moment. But this is a picture of Old Town, which Ryan swears is almost exactly as he pictured it after reading the Inspector Rebus novels.

Close quarters and embarrassing bodies

Mary King's Close: This alley in Old Town was buried under the Royal Exchange and preserved for hundreds of years. It is now reopened as a "tourist attraction", with tours led by costumed figures from the close's history. Our best description: Very touristy, so go early in the day. But it is enlightening to understand just how crowded the city was in the 1600s and the differences in how the classes lived (12 people living in a small windowless room with a bucket for sanitation that they could only empty into the alley twice a day). Pity the extremely poor people who had to live next to the cow shed and scrape up the blood from the floor after a slaughtering to make black pudding (something we will definitely not be eating while we're here). No photos were allowed in the close.

No bland network PSAs here: We took an opportunity Saturday night to watch some local television programming, particularly a show called (no joke) Embarrassing Bodies. It seems to be an educational reality show, and this particular episode featured morbidly obese individuals who:

• desired surgery to remove excess skin after a dramatic weight loss
• required gastric bypass as a life saving procedure
• need to have a stomach removed because it hung down past a man's knees

The doctors who host the show also staged screenings in cities throughout the country and work with families to address the nation's obesity problem (apparently Britain is the "fat man of Europe" -- their words, not ours). It was shocking to see, especially because they show everything - topless women, surgical procedures, and even an anatomically correct animation about why obese men frequently have problems with intimacy.

There is also a companion website where you could look up your own health issues, or try to find out more about one's spotlighted on the show, or even apply to be on the show yourself.

The site contains this well-deserved warning: "The Embarrassing Bodies website contains images of an explicit medical nature and nudity in a medical context."

Educational but truly frightening, and it made me feel really guilty about our post-dinner chocolate run at Sainsbury's.

Rainy weather: Someone needs to patent a pair of waterproof dress pants. It has rained nearly every day since we arrived in Scotland, though Saturday was by far the worst. We were soaked by the time we made it up the hill to our first stop of the day. Then we walked all the way down and back up the Royal Mile to do some souvenir shopping and get lunch. By the time we made it to the Scottish Parliament and had to remove our belts to go through the metal detectors, I had to hold up my jeans to keep them from falling down due to the heaviness of the water.

You probably can't see the water lines around Ryan's knees, but we both had them.

We stopped at a Turkish coffee shop to warm up in the afternoon. I had Turkish apple tea, while Ryan had Turkish coffee (and we both tried Turkish Delight). 

Photo of the day:

This is the outside of the Scottish Parliament, which Ryan looks at in depth in his post.  

Sign of the day:

The signs outside the Deacon Brodie Tavern, named after a disreputable Edinburgh resident who was supposedly the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 

Cheers, Beers and the End of the World

Friday's highlight wasn't the sight-seeing but the sports watching. We spent the late afternoon at a pub to watch the Wimbledon semi-finals featuring Scotsman Andy Murray against Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

And wouldn't you know it? Murray made history, dispatching Tsonga in four sets to become the first man from this island to reach the Wimbledon finals since good ol' Bunny Austin in 1938.

Elizabeth's reaction mirrors that of the Scots at the O2 Pub in Edinburgh as their countryman made history. 

While it was fun to watch the Scot win while at a pub in his home country, I was a little surprised at the understated reaction when Murray punched his ticket to the finals with a winner on the line. A quick cheer went up and then the pub collectively got back to drinking and playing pool. They actually cheered louder when Tsonga took a shot to the groin in the third set.


Speaking of pubs, that brings us to a new feature: beer of the day. Today's winner -- Brew Dog IPA brewed in Fraserburgh. It's rare that I go for an IPA but this had a lot of taste with a citrusy twist.

Sorry, no pictures of the Brew Dog. This is me with an inferior beer.  

Sign of the Day:
Elizabeth picked this one out. An alley leading to a courtyard or square is sometimes called a "close." And this particular close was next to the famous World's End Pub. The result: Something the Maya would agree with.

That's supposed to be my "Oh, crap" look. 

As for the rest of the day, we experienced Edinburgh Castle. It is beautiful, full of history and offers a spectacular view of the Scottish capital city from 120 meters above sea level. It's also tempting ... to push other tourists off the side of it. Fortunately, a nice Scottish gentleman redeemed our faith in humanity and took a good picture of us.

A battlement with a view.