Wizards Used to Live Here

This week's Saturday Adventure took place on Sunday instead!  After last weekend's inter-city trip to Glasgow, we thought we'd do something a little closer to home.  Thus, we headed off to Lauriston Castle which was a rather recent addition to my master To-Do List for Edinburgh. It took us awhile to figure out how to get out to Lauriston, as it is quite a ways away from the city center.  But, an hour later, we ended up close enough to at least walk to our destination!  I've mentioned before how crazy it is to me that I can board a city bus, be on it for half an hour, and feel like I'm in the middle of nowhere.  For those of you who know me well, and assume that I am using hyperbole to make my point about the city feeling small, I challenge you to look one of the sheep we saw upon getting off the bus in the eye and say that!!!  Seriously...field of sheep.

So, after we walk around that, we find the entrance to the castle, which is, appropriately, guarded by two Sphinx statues.  Well, more accurately, just one because the other's head was off, but thanks to Alyssa, we remedied that grievous error.

 
Before and After

The castle grounds were spectacular and I get frustrated trying to describe how strong the sense of history is in the places I go.  Once you step foot into the grounds of Lauriston, you are immediately swept up in the fantasy of living hundreds of years ago.  The house (because it's actually a fortified house and not a castle - though the pictures beg to differ. I mean...turrets. Nuff said) was built in the 16th century and has had over 30 different owners over the years.  The original owners, however, were my favorites immediately because they were brave astrologers and astronomers.  They loved the stars and math and all that stuff which just SCREAMS witchcraft.  So the townspeople thought they were wizards.  The little plaques shown below prove as much.  The darker one was a horoscope stone, showing what the constellations would've looked like at the time of the birth of the eldest son.  The lighter beige plaque was added by the new owners to affirm their belief in god and is actually an annagram of their names rearranged to say something akin to "Whoop Whoop! We love the lord. There ain't no wizards here!" Or something more elegant...but you get the point.

 
 

What makes Lauriston rather unique in terms of other "castles" we've been to so far, is that the inside has been preserved and is actually a museum now.  The last owners, who passed away in 1926, left the house and grounds to Scotland, ensuring that it would continue on and teach us commoners of the future what it was like to live back then.  So, the interior is all done in Edwardian style and the Reid's, the final owners, appear to be total ballers.  The husband was an interior designer and furniture maker while the wife came from a family of sanitation engineers, resulting in some super weird decorating choices.  However, they were one of the first homes in the area to have central heating and electricity.  Plus, the heating that was installed in the 1920's is still going strong today!  Quick shout-outs to the hidden door in Mr. Reid's office and in the library (classic Wizard shiz) and to the random-ass gong in the hallway.  They were big collectors and had a number of super weird things in their place - making me only like them more, naturally!  My favorite interior thing was the chair pictured below in the library. It's a "reading chair" - only for men, of course - and they sit on it backwards, using the attachment for their book or for writing. Hidden compartments contain space for an inkwell on the right arm, glasses in the left arm, and a book in the seat.

 

 

Another kick-ass thing about Lauriston is the Edinburgh-Kyoto Friendship Garden which was built in 2002 by a Japanese designer named Takashi Sawano.  From both the garden and the larger grounds you can see the Firth and, to all of our surprise, Cramond Island!  What?  Yeah, we were SUPER close to this castle when we came to visit Cramond and had no idea!  So that was cool.  As you can see, we had a good deal of fun roaming the grounds and being outrageous.  Hope you enjoyed the pics!

 

 

Glasgow Invented Goth

This past Saturday's adventure was on a bigger scale. We went inter-city travel this time around!  Glasgow, the city on the other side of Scotland, takes only an hour and a half to get there by bus (and faster if you want to go by rail, but it costs more), making it accessible and a great candidate for a day trip!  And Day Tripping (Beatles, anyone?) is exactly what we did!

 

 

Our trip this time around was a bit less organized. We knew we wanted to go to Glasgow, but we didn't have a concrete plan for what we wanted to see. I had done some minimal googling beforehand, but we were all basically up for a real adventure this time around.  So, with that in mind, we woke up super early (8:00 on a Saturday? Sacrilege!) and headed to the bus station on Princes Street.  After much reading, laughing and a little singing for Phoebe and I (P.Y.T. and other Glee mash-ups), we pulled into Buchanan station in the city center of Glasgow!

My first impressions of the city was how much more modern it appeared than Edinburgh, which makes sense since Edinburgh is a world heritage city and Glasgow is not.  However, the way they mixed the old and new seem artfully haphazard and the results were both interesting and oddly beautiful.

 

My second impression of the city, as we started trekking to the destination we came up with at the last minute - the Necropolis - was all of the street art around the city.  As you'll see in the photos below, the street artists in Glasgow have a major advantage when compared to Edinburgh - and maybe even Chicago!

 

 

When we got to the Necropolis, expecting maybe an old crumbling ruin and not much else, we were surprised to discover a University campus with old, red buildings, Glasgow Cathedral (also known as St. Mungo's Cathedral) and an entire hillside full of eerie grey graves and monuments rising out of the mist.  Glasgow's Necropolis is home to 50,000 corpses and was started in 1832. Since then, a number of influential Glaswegians have been buried there.  The necropolis was built around a statue of John Knox that sits on a pillar at the top of the hill and was built in 1825.  The necropolis is a beautiful and big part of Glasgow and there is a quote about it from one of its own, Billy Connolly who said, "Glasgow...doesn't care much for the living, but it really looks after the dead."  The cathedral, however, is also super gothic.  It was built in the 12th century and has the crypt of St. Mungo himself in the basement.  Is anyone else hearing the thump thump of a telltale heart?  No?  Just me?  Ah well...

 

 

(Glasgow Cathedral, John Knox statue at the top of the Necropolis, etc.)

The entire day was grey and really set the scene for the dark places we visited in the city.  Overall, though we were disappointed by the rain that set in heavily during the afternoon, we had a wonderful time and loved our walk through part of Glasgow.  We're hoping for another day trip during our stay to see over sides to this eerie city!

 

 

Oh, and I can't leave you without a bit of that Liz Boyd weirdness you all crave so much - so I'll bring up the statue of the Duke of Wellington that sits in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art.  Built in 1844, the tradition to cap it with a traffic cone was started by locals in the early 1980's and has continued since.  Apparently the practice has continued to show the sense of humor of the city and, despite many attempts to stop it, the traffic cone is always replaced.  For this, it made Lonely Planet's 2011 list of the "top 10 most bizarre monuments on Earth".  So there you go - your fun fact for the day!

Episode 8: In Which Our Heroine Inherits A Mansion

Okay, so maybe I didn't "inherit" a mansion so much as pose meaningfully in front of one.  The name of the mansion?  Why, "The Manse" of course.

My actual quote upon seeing this photo? "This photo reeks of wealth and privilege."

Now...back to reality!  Over the past weekend, I visited another spot on my Edinburgh To-Do list and that place is Cramond Village.  Located to the north west of the city, it was only about a half hour long bus ride from the city center.  Chicagoans, can you believe that??  It takes 30 minutes to get from the near south side of Chicago to downtown some days, so it's crazy to me that I'm able to access so many beautiful natural landscapes either within the city or right on the outskirts!  But I digress...Cramond Village is another historic area in the city and it is significant for a few different reasons.

 

First of these is the super cool Cramond Island which is located really close to shore and is actually accessible at some parts of the day via the tidal causeway.  Now, I know most of you are thinking, "Liz, just what in the high-heck is a 'tidal causeway'."  Well, dear friends, it is a walkway that is cross-able depending on the tides.  Unfortunately for us (due to a birthday celebration the night before), we did not get up early enough to walk the walk, but we were still able to go a ways out and it was very, very cool.  The island is significant because during World War II it was used as an outpost to secure the coast against invasion and a number of the buildings that were built are still on the island.  Also...in modern times people throw some pretty bitchin' all-night parties out there!

 

Cramond Village also has a few awesome old buildings, including the Cramond Kirk, Cramond Tower, and Cramond Inn (they weren't real original in their building names, but that's neither here nor there) which are pictured below.  Especially noteworthy is Cramond Inn where my flatmates and I enjoyed delicious food in a warm cozy environment that served as inspiration to Robert Louis Stevenson, the famous Scottish novelist, poet and essayist (remember when people used to be "essayists"?  Yeah, me neither).  His most famous works include the "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" as well as "Treasure Island".  Was he talking about Cramond Island????

 

 

I doubt it.  But it was fun to pretend for a sec.

Another highlight that I think a lot of other people (more normal people) would've missed was this stone table in the back of Cramond Kirk that very obviously was the location of Aslan's sacrifice for those of you who are familiar with The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (which I assume is ALL of you).  On a more historical note, the back of Cramond Kirk also shows evidence of old barracks from WWII and especially terrifying trees that from a distance look totally normal....

But close up look like they have people tied to the bottom of them???!!!!  So. Scary.

Now that's some Halloweeny stuff right there!  Hope you all enjoy this next weekend as much as I know I plan to and if you get too scared of the creepy trees, just scroll back up to the top of the post where you'll be reminded of my impending inheritance of "The Manse".