Museums in Edinburgh are small, almost homely. The Writers' Museum: a wooden horse of Sir Walter Scott, a silk scarf worn by young Stevenson. The Tartan Museum: for a fee you can weave a piece of traditional fabric yourself or try on a full outfit of a Scottish Highlander. The Toy Museum is a touching collection from different countries and eras: huge dollhouses and carriages of the Victorian era, railways, yachts and construction sets that replaced them, pious Sunday games (take the "board game" with pieces and a die based on the Books of the Bible: "Second Epistle to Timothy. Instructions. Skip a turn and listen to instructions"). And from new acquisitions - talking hamster and transformers.
Next, just in brief. Botanical Garden: lush flowering, quiet nooks, greenhouses, lawns... Foxes live in the garden. Edinburgh Castle: St Margaret's Chapel (12th century), a huge mortar, the crown of Scottish kings, dungeons, guardhouse, cannons in the loopholes of the fortress wall. Stunning views of the city below. A modest detail – an old cemetery for soldiers' dogs.
Holyrood Palace: Scottish kings used to live here, and now members of the royal family are officially accommodated during visits to Scotland. The rest of the time – a museum open to the public.
Cemeteries with crypts, blackened monuments, ivy weaving over graves – a real setting for a Gothic novel. A bas-relief on the grave of a colonel who died of wounds from the Afghan war – the one where Doctor Watson was wounded. Graves from Pushkin's time, still tended by descendants of the buried.
A column on the hill – a monument to Nelson. A black Gothic obelisk – to Walter Scott; you can climb the spiral staircase all the way to the top. Below is Princes Street, the main shopping street.
Hay Market Square – a hay market, now tents sell cheese, spices, woven baskets, painted lamps, inexpensive jewelry and other pleasant trifles. St Giles' Cathedral: an openwork dome, stained glass windows, solemn and sad silence. The new Scottish Parliament: strange but nice modern design. A shabby pub with a red facade, already a place of pilgrimage: they say it was there that J.K. Rowling began writing her epic. And in Glasgow, by the way, there is St Mungo's Cathedral and Hospital (in the fifth Potter book, wizards injured by magic are treated there). The ancient University of Glasgow somehow vaguely resembles Hogwarts.
Scottish Hills
Just as Moscow is not all of Russia, so Edinburgh and Glasgow are not all of Scotland. To see it, you have to go north. The roads are good, but the terrain is, to put it mildly, rolling, so those prone to motion sickness quickly start feeling nauseous.
The local landscapes are worth seeing. The thickets are mysterious and tangled, the hills are covered with fuzzy greenery (according to legend, elves lived here). There is a lot of rowan. Scottish housewives planted it in front of the house so that fairy guests would not swap the child. At one moment a house with an old heather roof flashes by, at another a mossy village monument to a certain reverend, "pastor and poet, who fell asleep in the Lord in 1768". Further stretch idyllic meadows with almost toy sheep.
Villages and suburbs: kilometers of identical houses with a row of chimneys on tiled roofs, roses under the windows. Fishing villages by the sea are quite special. In one of them (now the town of Queensferry in Fife), on a gloomy bay over which two openwork bridges are thrown, there is a pub where Stevenson wrote 'Treasure Island'. Seagulls screech over the sea, seals swim up to the shore. The road leaves the coast, winding among mountains and lakes shrouded in fog. The mountains slightly resemble the Urals. Brown spots on them are heather.
Every river islet, hillock, and ancient castle is associated with legends full of grim beauty. In Scone Castle, the seat of the Earls of Mansfield, you can see a purple coverlet richly embroidered in cross-stitch: it is the work of Mary Stuart, who spent a year imprisoned in one of these fortresses. Scone is a relatively young castle, from the 18th century, but next to it is a chapel where all Scottish kings were crowned, including Macbeth, and a copy of the Stone of Destiny on which they sat during the coronation. And inside the castle itself, among ancient exhibits and majestic portraits, are family photographs of the current earls, who live in the non-tourist part of the building. Children's drawings by the countess-of-such-and-such. The father of the current earl as an infant. Strong feelings: our history has been cut off from the present day many times by the scissors of coups and revolutions, while they have settled comfortably in theirs and live to this day. It is no accident that English has the Present Perfect tense, and Russian does not.
Modest-looking hotels and guesthouses hide in the Scottish wilderness (the Beatles stayed here, and Elton John lived there). Amazing silence. Water lilies, geese and ducks, grey-stone houses overgrown with ivy and lichen. The big bourgeoisie rests here: strolls, plays golf, goes boating, fishes (the license costs a fortune).
If you get chilled by the drizzle, you can stop by a distillery – a little plant where whisky is made. Admire the barley drying over peat, the vat where it ferments, the huge copper moonshine still where the fermented mass is distilled, the casks into which it is poured and in which the distillate is aged. At the tasting they pour some, but not much. Rather, they teach you to drink with understanding and distinguish the varieties.
Yes, yes, yes!
Yes, whisky indeed is not chased with a snack.
Yes, kilts are worn not only for tourists. Every Scotsman receives a ceremonial suit with a kilt on his 16th birthday. The whole outfit costs about 450 pounds (roughly twice as much in dollars). By the age of thirty, one has to get a new one: the habit of pubs affects one's dimensions. Children have nothing against the national costume (a kilt is cool) and gladly wear it for festive occasions. Offhand, an adult Scot can recall about twenty clan tartan patterns.
Yes, thistles really do grow here and there along roadsides. But they are not worn in buttonholes. In a restaurant, they may put one in a little vase on the table.
Yes, haggis (tasting like terribly peppered liver mince) is indeed cooked at home and bought in shops for oneself, not just to treat foreigners.
Guests may be taken to a "Scottish Night". This is roughly the same as the Spanish, Cypriot, Turkish, and Greek versions: lots of food, drink, and dancing to national music. Many people like it – especially learning Scottish dances after the third glass of whisky.
However, as I already said, Scotland is good even in the tourist version.