Today was a bit of a double day. Our morning was our last day in Edinburgh, and therefor dedicated to getting to things we had not yet had time for.

Today started out, as any good day should, with a large breakfast. We ventured forth to the Arcade Haggis and Whisky House for a Scottish breakfast. This was an augmented version of England’s Full Breakfast. In addition to everything before, we also have hash browns, haggis, and black pudding. All very tasty if you can manage to not think about what’s in them. Black pudding is a sausage made out of pork fat, oatmeal, suet, and blood. Haggis is made out of sheep hearts, livers, lungs, oatmeal, and suet, and is traditionally cased in stomach. A lot of things that my stomach is not used to eating.

From there, we returned to the Grayfriar’s Kirkyard. With more time available, this place deserved a more dedicated look. Many of the grave markers were inscribed well before the United States existed. These warn down graves, adorned with skulls, demons, and babies carrying hour glasses, are much more meditative then they are grim.

One last major site to see was Arthur’s Seat, which is an extinct volcano at the east end of Edinburgh’s Royal mile. Instead of the hike to the tallest peak (the real Arthur’s Seat), we ventured to the peak nearest the city, and more off the beaten path. Along the way, we kept encountering snails by the side of the path. At the top, we were afforded an incredible view of the city, but only had to share it with a few other people, rather than the horde of hikers that crowded the main peak.

After taking in the view, we returned to the base and began our walk up the Royal Mile towards our hostel. Taking the back streets, we came across a BrewDog pub. BrewDog is a Scottish brewery that is world known for their beers with high alcohol content; beers named “Tactical Nuclear Penguin” at 32% (then the world record), “Sink The Bismarck” at 41% (reclaiming world record), and “The End Of History” at 55%. Typically yeasts will die off at a much lower percents, making these benchmarks no small feat. We did a sampling of five of their beers, all very good.

We returned to the hostel to pick up our luggage, walked to the train station, and got on the next train to Glasgow. Where Edinburgh has an old, weathered, and magical feeling to it, Glasgow is the bustling, youthful, and creative city. Many of my favorite musical groups came out of Glasgow, including Belle and Sebastian, and Franz Ferdinand.

Our friend Kaija met us at the train station and brought us to her home to drop off our baggage. Along the way, locals were doing a sub-crawl. This is a pub crawl, where instead of crawling, you take the subway to each stop, get out, and have a pint of beer. We got off the train with this raucous group as we quickly stopped at Kaija’s home, where she offered us a bed to sleep on, delicious chocolates on our pillows, and use of her laundry machine.

She invited us out to a show in the park in which some of her theater friends were performing. It was a production of Twelfth Night, with the promise that if it started to rain, we could go inside to see another group’s production of Coriolanus. The set and music were set in the 1950s, with colorful paints, record players, vintage radios, and great costuming. They had musical interludes where they would lip sync to a song, thereby sticking to the script while expanding on a character’s development. It was only interrupted once or twice by the shouts of a confused man with too much to drink who was probably confused as to why they had closed most of the park’s gates.

After the show, we grabbed a few drinks with a group of Kaija’s friends. This bar and the surrounding sidewalks were busy (If there was a theme with today, it’s probably that the Scots like to drink). We had finally found an Englishman to ask about the weird sidewalk behavior.

In the USA, as well as most places that I’ve travelled, there’s an implicit agreement that you walk on the right side of the sidewalk. In England, I had my share of bumping into people using that method. I tried switching to the left and I’d still had a few collisions. It seemed that even if I moved out of the way of somebody, they would somehow still run into me. It was like I was being hunted.

This was all new to the Englishman, who had never heard of this complaint. He acknowledged that there was no convention, but that he never bumps into people. So somehow, they must develop this sixth sense of walking smoothly that relies only on instinct.

This mystery being solved, we took an Uber back to Kaija’s flat, hung laundry, and began planning the next day.

-Ray