Random Notes

Whiskey Tour
At the beginning of February, I went on a tour of a whiskey distillery. Turns out I don't like whiskey. But I did learn about the distilling process, how whiskey gets its flavour and the difference between single malt and blended whiskeys. Plus the tour also stopped off at Scotland's tallest tree and Scotland's oldest tree (not the same tree). Overall, an informative day.



The view from Queen's View (another stop on the tour)

Irish Dancing
I'd been itching to try something new and found an ad for Irish Dancing classes and thought "perfect!". The classes were advertised as a "keep fit" class so I went in expecting a mild workout, maybe break a bit of a sweat but oh my god was I wrong! I like to think I'm in reasonable shape (jog 3 times a week and seem to do a lot of walking) but that class kicked my ass. I was not expecting the planks, and the one arm planks, and the squats, and the wall sits and all the prolonged jumping exercises (this may have been the Irish Dancing part...). That was Monday night. Today is Thursday and I'm still a bit stiff but at least I could get up from my desk without grimacing. That being said, the class was also pretty fun and I'm planning on going back next week. Everyone was super nice and I wasn't the only newbie who didn't have a clue what was going on.


UK Culinary Experience
I am developing a serious thing for potato leak soup. It's heading towards "best soup ever" territory.
On the other hand, the below display from the Museum of Scotland made me a little wary of Scottish butter:

I am Canadian
It took relocating to a different country for me to realize how much I love Canada and how proud I am to be Canadian. I think we have an amazing country filled (or not really filled... it's a big country) with amazing people. All Rob Ford and Justin Bieber jokes aside, I love the reputation Canadians have and the way that people from other countries view us. So, to my fellow Canadians: let's not screw that up.



Canada House, London

Perth

The day after I went to Berwick-Upon-Tweed, I took a train in the other direction and went to check out Perth, which is north and a wee bit west of Edinburgh. It used to be the capital of Scotland. I got some advice from a coworker who used to live in Perth who told me to check out Kinnoull Hill, which is a park on the edge of the city. It has a bunch of trails that wind through a forest and up a big hill. It was really pretty and had fantastic views. I spent a couple of hours happily wandering along trails and enjoying the scenery (and the weather!).

Perth and the beautiful snow covered hills

The view from the other side of the hill

The River Tay runs through/around Perth and I learned that the river that runs through the town of Perth, Ontario is also called the Tay River. It's not that we're copycats or anything... maybe it's more a case of mimicry being the greatest form of flattery? I have recently learned that a lot of people who have shaped Canada were Scottish - John A. MacDonald, Alexander MacKenzie, Tommy Douglas, Alexander Graham Bell (kind of amusing how both countries claim to be inventors of the telephone... and come to think of it, we can't claim the telephone and basketball - that's just having our cake and eating it too... although why you would want cake without eating it, I'm not sure). Anyhoo, I didn't realize Canada and Scotland were so linked (you would have thought "Nova Scotia" would have tipped me off but apparently not).



Berwick-Upon-Tweed

Having visited North Berwick the Saturday before, this past Saturday I decided to go to the other Berwick: Berwick-Upon-Tweed, at the northeastern tip of England. It's an old walled city on the coast at the mouth of the Tweed River.

Berwick-Upon Tweed Wall

I really enjoyed my day there - it was raining when I first arrived so I browsed some shops until the rain lessened and then followed the path along the top of the town wall before heading across the river to check out the coast line in Spittal. The waves on the coast were large enough to remind me that I'm afraid of the ocean (they weren't even that big... I think it was just that I had walked out to the end of a long pier and was surrounded by them). By the end of the day, the sun had even come out.

Coastline

Oceanfront in Spittal

Sunset from the train station

North Berwick

Earlier in February, I spent a Saturday in North Berwick. It was my second time in North Berwick as my parents and I went there on Christmas day. There looked to be lots of really nice coastal paths so I thought I'd go back and try them out. I started the day by climbing to the top of the North Berwick Law (law = hill for those who aren't in the know) and was rewarded by some awesome views. It was really nice to see fields of green! I'm so used to seeing only brown and white in February so green, combined with sparkling blue ocean and bright sunshine, was fantastic.

Green fields - looking west-ish from North Berwick Law

North Berwick
(it amused me to no end that my shadow was down there somewhere)

After grabbing some food in town, I went for a long walk on a beach in the sun. It was really nice until I turned around and had to walk all the way back into the wind... then it was not so nice.

The weather that day was great. It rained in Edinburgh all day but, even though it's only a 30 minute train ride away, it was sunny in North Berwick. It kind of hit home how localized the weather can be.

North Berwick Old Port

Celtic Connections - Glasgow

This weekend, I went back to Glasgow to take in some of the Celtic Connections festival (a festival celebrating Celtic music). I went to see two concerts: a bagpiping concert and an Irish/bluegrass/banjo concert. I am SO glad that I did this. It was just so much fun. I loved both concerts and I would have come back with a bagful of new CD's had I owned anything on which I could play them.

The piping concert had 4 acts in the first half and then the National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland in the second half. It was educational as well as entertaining. I learned that there is Spanish Celtic music (with Spanish bagpipes), which actually sounds like you think it would (bagpipes with a Spanish flair). And I learned that there are different types of bag pipes - traditional ones, Spanish ones and littler ones (the technical descriptions of course). I think my favorite act of this concert was Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson, who basically just got on stage and jammed with their littler bagpipes (they were probably doing more than just jamming but that's how it came across). Not being a fan of watching jazz artists jam, watching two bagpipers play together was actually really entertaining.

The other concert featured We Banjo 3 and ChessBoxer. I don't really like bluegrass or banjo music so I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy this but even just watching We Banjo 3 play was awesome. They were so into what they were doing and having so much fun doing it that I think I sat there the whole time with a smile on my face. They were all incredibly talented and the music was fantastic as well (I love me an Irish reel). It was fabulous. I'd go see them again in a heartbeat.

And thus concludes the music review portion of my blog. And for the first time in a while, I'm finally all up to date with my blog posts, sorting through the piles of photos I've taken and posting photos on Facebook... plus I cleaned my room. I feel so productive!

Dublin

Last weekend I travelled outside the UK for the first time since I've been here - I made the grueling 1 hour flight to Dublin, Ireland. To be honest, it was ok - not horrible but not brilliant. I didn't really have much planned, which may have been part of the problem, and I'm not really sure what I expected of the city either. 

Dublin

Dublin

Here are the highlights and lowlights:

• I made the obligatory trip to the Guinness Brewery - it was interesting and included the freshest pint of Guinness I've ever had, but I spent the whole time thinking that they must be making a killing (it wasn't cheap and it was packed). 
• I went to the Archeology section of the National Museum of Ireland where I learned that they recently (2006, I think) found a book buried in peat that was 1000 years old (pretty neat when I think about it).
• I went to the Modern Art Gallery where I got absolutely none of the exhibits (I can normally understand/appreciate one or two ... but not here).
• I went to the Science Gallery, which, in combination with having a bath tub in my hotel room (exciting when your flat only has a shower), made the weekend for me. It's a gallery that combines science with art and all the exhibits were artists depictions of where they think science and technology can take us in the future. There was one that explained that in the future humans could give birth to other mammals so we could help repopulate endangered species. There was a model of a dolphin in a human uterus (like when you see a model of a human fetus in a uterus at a doctor's office... but instead of a human fetus, it was a dolphin). There was another exhibit showing video of what looked like a pristine landscape but was actually a sort of farm for producing liquid oxygen for fueling space travel. The species of plants and animals on the farm had specific purposing for "growing" the liquid oxygen. It was all a little weird and very interesting!





Guinness Brewery

Looking up at the Spire



Aquaducts

Britain's canal system has a bunch of aquaducts along it and for some reason I find this really strange. I know we have aquaducts in Canada (I can think of one... so maybe not all that common) and I completely understand the purpose/necessity of having them, I just think a bridge with water on it (as opposed to under it) is a bit weird. Nonetheless, a couple of weekends ago, I went to see one. I walked along the Union Canal from Falkirk (home of the Falkirk Wheel) to Linlithgow (home of all things Linlithgow). Along the way sits the Avon Aquaduct - Scotland's longest and tallest aquaduct at 250m long and 26m high.



Avon Aquaduct from the bottom

Not being a fan of heights by any means, I really don't know why I thought it would be fun to walk along an aquaduct. Things were fine until I got about halfway across where, all of a sudden, I became completely convinced I was going to fall into the canal. Why? I have no idea. The path beside the canal was at least a metre and a half wide and I had a really good railing to hold on to. Maybe I knew that I wasn't going to fall off the aquaduct because of the railing so I figured I would fall the other way into the canal. It made for a tense time walking over the rest of the aquaduct with a death grip on the railing but I made it without falling and then spent the next 15 minutes laughing at myself.

Avon Aquaduct
(note the easiness of not falling into the canal)