As we had done in our earlier travel in Europe, we rented a car to get to our house sit in central England in order to have the freedom to explore. It also enabled us to explore other parts of the country after the house sit was complete. We drove north to visit Scotland, both Glasgow on the west side and Edinburgh to the east.
We found the people to be friendly and outgoing. When we first arrived at the street where our AirBnB was located, a man noticed us looking around and asked if he could help us find anything. We were approached by another local the next morning while having breakfast at a nearby café; she just wanted to chat for a few minutes.
We also found a similar sentiment to what I mentioned in an earlier post: the Scottish and the English are not on what you might call the best of terms. One of the museums we visited proudly displayed the following excerpt from the Declaration of Arbroath from 1320: “As long as only one hundred of us remain alive we will never on any conditions be brought under English rule. For we fight not for glory, nor for riches, nor for honours, but for freedom alone, which no good man gives up except with his life.”
We stayed in a working-class neighborhood in tenement housing. I had heard the word “tenement” before, but didn’t actually know what it meant. As I understand it now, it is an apartment building, maybe three or four stories tall, where a common front door leads to several units inside. The tenements in the neighborhood we stayed in were around 110-140 years old. There was a train within walking distance that made for an easy trip into Edinburgh.
We had our rental car, but we decided leave the car parked at the AirBnB and to take the train into the city instead of driving, dealing with potential traffic congestion, and finding and paying for parking. As it turned out, we were very happy about this decision. We didn’t know about it beforehand, but the Scottish Communist Party held a major rally, which blocked many of the main roads for several hours. Tour buses, taxis – everyone was stuck in traffic. We were so happy to have arrived by train and to be exploring on foot. I have to throw in one political comment about this rally – I found it ironic that a major rallying cry by these Communist Party protesters was for freedom!
We did discover a little of the Scottish sense of humor during our visit. The tour guide on the hop on hop off bus explained that in most countries’ judicial systems, a defendant on trial will be found either “Guilty” or “Not guilty”. Scotland has another option – “Not proven”, or in other words, “We know you did it, we just can’t prove it”, also referred to as “getting off Scot free”. The photo below contains another example. Instead of using the official name of this bridge, locals refer to it as the “squinty bridge” because it doesn’t cross the river perpendicularly, but at an angle.
