Dublin :: Ireland
On being drunker than an entire wedding party of Scots and Irish.
Places: Dundee, Castlehaven, Aberdeen, Inverness, Fort William, Glasgow, Stirling & Edinburgh.
Coolest thing I did: Saw a couple of good mates tie the knot.
Coolest thing I didn´t know: It's a sad indictment on your country when you have to go to Scotland for better weather..
My first time off since I started working (a whole month ago as some people seem intent on reminding me) saw myself, Mark and Dee off to Dundee in Scotland to see our mates Ellen and Graeme get married. It was a weekend that would have been dominated by football and drinking for most of Europe, with the World Cup final 4 being a wholly Euro affair but we decided to slot a wedding in there somewhere. I have been to Edinburgh a few times before, and even went in a hire car as far north as mid-Loch Ness way back on my first out of city trip when I lived in London, but most of Scotland was a complete unknown quantity to me. It seems like we went out of our way to remedy this over four days, even if it was a pretty superficial look at most places.
We prepared for the wedding, as one would expect, sitting in the sun at the Dundee arts centre, which has an excellent view over the inlet. This also involved reaquainting ourselves with the local lager, Tennents, which I'd previously written off due to it's link to the Tramp fuel that is Tennents Super but which turns out isn't that bad a drop. After a very quick change for me and Mark into our suits and back down the road to the pub we met up with Dee at about quarter to four and our festive state pretty much set the tone for the night. The hotel where the wedding was set was a posh looking affair and despite most of the crowd being either under 10 or over 60 we managed to sniff out the other friends of the bride and groom and take up the back row for the wedding itself.
It was the kind of wedding I could relate to, very short ceremony with all the right elements followed by light drinking and heavy eating. The ceremony was a civil affair, held in a room at the hotel to the accompaniment of flutes. I had my photo taken with the bemused flute players, but I think they humored me because I was either a very excitable looking person or visibly drunk. I'd like to think the former was true but it was probably the latter. We mingled with the family a bit before dinner and managed to find out about everyone who has a cousin, child, sibling etc in Australia. In a room full of Scots and Irish that is quite a sizable number. You get used to answering questions like “How far is Young from Sydney?” with a straight face. The dinner and speeches went all well and the dancing afterwards should have been enough to finish anyone off for the night. We, instead decided to go into town at about 1am to the student nightclub that is Fat Sams. We may have been looking a bit disheveled at this point, but we were allowed entry. I think this may have been due to the fact everyone else was dressed as students typically are and we look like we'd been drinking for about 12 hours at a wedding. I amused myself by telling everyone that I was there to ensure the media didn't take any pictures of Dee, who is a star in Home and Away but I don't think it went all that well due to my swaying and drinking on the job.
Mark had his weekends mixed up so had to wake up bright and early the next day to get to somewhere in Northern England to catch flight back to Dublin in time to make his flight to Japan for a two week holiday. I can only imagine what hell that was as I stumbled out of bed closer to lunch time and was in no fit state to drive the hire car. Dee would have been a better choice, but as she lost her wallet with the license in it about a month ago could not legally do so. Instead we ate burgers and slept in the park like common tramps until I was sober enough to drive.
The first touristy bit came just before Aberdeen, in a place called Castlehaven. It's famous for having a nice harbor and a castle nearby built into a rock outcropping facing towards Europe. We had to go there to meet Martin, Dee's former landlord and our host for the evening so we decided to stop moping around and walk the 2 and a half miles to the castle and back. It was lots of uphill, clinging to picturesque cliffs and walking through fields of some planted grain, but I think the exercise and sea air did us both good. Add to the fact the almost perfect weather held out for another day and it was a downright pleasant way to spent the afternoon. We were obviously in backpacker mindsets because we entertained a whole bunch of Chinese tourists by climbing up the hill to the castle and then refusing quite loudly to pay the 4 pounds entry fee. We felt so good when we got back to the harbor we even contemplated sitting on the seawall outside all the pubs in the sun and having a beer, but sanity or sickness prevailed.
Martin did well in getting us to forget that we were stupidly hung over from the night before and got us drinking again almost as soon as we set down in his rather central Aberdeen flat. We went on a varied crawl though pubs that used to be churches, pubs that are often restaurants, vodka bars and student clubs at got to see a fairly big slice of nightlife. We also had dodgey chicken burgers on the way home and Whetherspoons all day breakfast the following morning so I'd say it was a full Scottish experience. We did take a half hearted walk around the grey granite town itself, but after years of wandering Europe it wasn't that much different to anything else I'd seen before. The people definetly make places like this, rather than the buildings. It's a nice enough town though but I'd hate to see the effects all those grey buildings have on people's mood in the height of winter.
We took a cursory drive to Inverness, not stopping but just passing through the cities many shopping centres and then down the length of Loch Ness. It's a pretty drive, but the weather finally broke along the way and the far side was hard to see due to the fog and overhanging cloud. My good mood also broke a bit due to the rest of the tourist traffic driving, well, like tourists. It took hours to pass about 70 miles of winding roads and I am now inclined to believe Dee's claim she gets carsick easily as she wasn't' looking so healthy by the end of all that either. It may have also been two days of steady drinking.
We spent the night in a B&B in Fort William, which is at the foot of Ben Nevis, Scotland's tallest peak and well situated overlooking a Loch (the name of which I'd have to look up). Due to the hostels being booked solid one of them recommended this place as having a twin room and being cheap. To call the woman who owned eccentric would have done her no justice. While Dee had a shower I sat down with the owner and had a cup of tea and decided she was harmlessly dotty. She's been planning a round the world trip for the better part of a decade but is either rather forgetful or not very good at planning. I explained how round the world tickets worked at it was like entirely new information. Explaining that Dee and I were not a couple was also hard work and I think Dee came down early to try and rescue me once she overheard that. We couldn't get out quick enough to see the football final and give her some time to be dotty on her own.
When we got back (a mere 3 pints of Guinness was all I had that night, which was a relief) there was an Aussie couple trapped in the kitchen eating their pizza with her and we decided to have a chat to them about life. They had obviously just started their traveling ways, telling us about how they were going to get away from London every weekend with the cheap flights and how they were going to save up their money for travel instead of going out drinking all the time. I remember when I told myself those lies too. They were keen for any travel tips, but I learned long ago that the best way to decide what to go and see is to just find one thing you're interested in and go and see that well. That will teach you some history or about what you do and don't like to do as activities while you're away and those preferences themselves will give you ideas about what to do next. When I first landed in London I didn't even know Big Ben was famous for being attached to the Houses of Parliament and now I could quite safely think of enough things I'd like to still see and do in Europe to fill in the rest of a lifetime.
The last day was a long one, mostly because we had to be out of the B&B at 9 so the owner could go to church. We drove down to Glasgow as it was one of the few places Dee has never been and parked the car and wandered around. The downtown has obviously seen some hard times but looks to be rejuvenating itself through retail (much like Dublin) and the building of new bridges and projects. We went and took a photo of the armadillo like Exhibition Centre and walked back along the river under all the new construction sites. In the beauty stakes I have to say that Edinburgh won out long ago, but I get the feeling Glasgow wouldn't be a bad place to spend a few more days (and most importantly nights) at some stage.
On the way back we stopped off in Stirling to see the rather impressive William Wallace monument, which is a castle like Victorian structure perched on the top of a rise overlooking the town itself. It's been there for about 150 years but obviously owes Mel Gibson a great debt of gratitude for making it a must see for the thousands of tour buses that ply the Scottish roads every year. There is even a much beheaded statue of William Wallace as played by Mel to let the tourists know they've come to the right place. It's only the locals that seem miffed that these tourists might go away thinking Will did actually look like Mel so a favorite past time has been sneaking up in the dead of night and chopping the head off the statue. As a result it looks lots less like Mr Gibson than I'm reliably told it once did.
When the World Cup final went to extra time our flight was miraculously delayed, as was every other flight going out of Edinburgh that night. We all huddled around the few TVs in the airport to watch a nail biter of a game. I will say this for Zidane, if you're going to end an illustrious football career with a foul you may as well do it by head butting someone in the chest, just to make sure. When the penalties ended there was a mad rush for the gates only to find that most of the planes were empty anyway. Seem everyone had the same idea.
Just for the record, we didn't see one hairy cow all weekend.