Trips for Days n' Days...

Whassup team?

Lately I've been branching out a little in the exploration of my surroundings. Everything here is so easily accessible (cause it's all so darn close together), so there's no reason for me to restrict my eyeballin' of tourist sites to Edinburgh.

Two weeks ago I had to pop down to Newcastle (an English city about an hour and a half south of Ed-Rock) for a work meeting. All new hires in my company (including Yours Truly) are paired up with a mentor from a management position to talk about things like life goals and how cool trains are. My mentor is Bob of Newcastle; he's in charge of making sure that train drivers know the things they're supposed to know. I had a great time hanging out with Bob. We drank tea, talked about ourselves and debated with his co-workers about whether a Geordie (Newcastle) or Cockney (London) accent was more charming. Then Bob let me play with the TRAIN DRIVING SIMULATOR, which was AWESOME. I drove a fake train all the way from fake London to fake Stevenage through a fake snowstorm! And I didn't injure even a single fake person. It was a blast! If anyone out there doesn't know what to do with their lives, consider driving a train - they have horns to toot and all kinds of fun buttons and levers!

After our official meeting was over, Bob gave me a mini-tour of the centre of Newcastle, then we bid each other farewell. Since I didn't have any reason to rush back to Edinburgh, I decided to spend my afternoon bumping around town. Newcastle is best known (or, should I say, "infamous"?) for its lively [and messy] nightlife. But, as it turns out, it's pretty fun in the daylight hours too. I poked around the university campus for a bit; it's all imposing stone buildings, airy courtyards and fairtrade lunchtime mini-markets, much as you'd expect an English university to be. After a bit more of a wander, I found myself at the Cathedral of St. Nicholas. Instead of a standard steeple, it has this cool, intricate open-arched, spiky dome thing on top. If you can't visualize that, it's okay, I captured it through the more accurate medium of photography. The inside of the cathedral was dark and grand, as such places often are. I was the only person in there for most of my visit. The information signs were better than in most churches, so I probably learned something while I was there, although thanks to my sieve of a memory, I'd be hard-pressed now to tell you what that was. In general, St. Nicholas' seemed to be more friendly and less judgey than the bulk of churches I've visited. Given further thought, this makes sense; it is, after all, a church dedicated to Santa Claus, the king of friendly dudes. Normally I don't leave a donation when I go to visit a church, but in this case I made an exception - I really enjoyed exploring this place, so I thought it was worth some of my monies. Besides, I'm not gonna be the one to snub Santa - I know upon which side my bread is buttered.

See? Spiky, archy church roof thing

Spiky, archy church roof in semi-silhouette

Inside the Santa Church

I really liked the understatedness and the nauticaliness of this stained-glass window

I figured, being in Newcastle as I was, I should go and see the new castle. It's not a very big castle, unlike the one in Edinburgh (Edinburgh - 1; Newcastle - 0), and it's not really all that new either. It's more like an old fort. But it wouldn't do to call a city OldFort - that's too close to "Old Fart," and where's the dignity in that? Anyway, it's still pretty cool-looking. Only the gatehouse was open to visitors while I was there. The castle itself is being refurbished and will re-open next month. When it does, I'm defs going back to Newcastle to chekkit, chekkit out.

Ye Olde New Castle

After castle time, I strolled down a kinda-hidden stone staircase and found myself beside the Tyne, Newcastle's resident river. It was a lovely, sunny day, so I spent a good 15 minutes lounging on a riverside bench, just watching dogs and old people run by. Then me tummy started a-rumblin', so I found a jazzy resto - The Slug and Lettuce - with a good view of the river and noshed on a falafel wrap.

The city's full name is Newcastle-on-Tyne, but no one says that 'cause of lazy

Sated and educated, I headed back to the train station. I still had a bit of time before my ride showed up, so I decided to lend my custom to the Centurion, the stylish old-timey bar (highly recommended by Bob) that was attached to the station. I wrapped up my day with a tasty bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale. A poetically fitting end to a beauty day trip.

Shout-out to the nice Romanian bartender who lent me some books, probably cause he thought I was lonely

About a week after my trip to Newcastle, I was bestowed with an unexpected day off work. I decided that the best use of my surprise free time would be to go on a FIELD TRIP! SO I flicked through my well-worn Edinburgh city guidebook and settled on going to Rosslyn Chapel. If you participate in pop culture at all, you many have heard of this place; it's the setting of the final, revelatory scene in The Da Vinci Code. A teensy weensy bit of my interest in visiting the chapel was based on that. But mostly, I just wanted to go cause I heard it was hecka pretty.

First view of the chapel

Rosslyn Chapel, funnily enough, is situated in the village of Roslin, which lies on the outskirts of Edinburgh near a collection of big ol' hills called the Pentlands. Roslin is accessible by city bus meaning that: a) it was far enough to feel like I was doing something out of the ordinary, but not so far that the commute sucked up my day and; b) the travel was cheap. Which was good, because the entrance fee at the chapel was not. But I'd say that the visit was worth the seven pounds, and the money goes back into conservation of the chapel, so it's all gooood, gooood.

Look at all the buttresses! Heh heh... I said "butt"...

This is the same day, just a couple of hours later. Scotland weather - so change-y!
When I took this photo, I had almost just walked Widdershins around the chapel! It's by a matter of a inches that I didn't end up stuck in Elfland!

The chapel was smaller than I had expected, but it was packed to the literal rafters with sculptures. And every single one of those sculptures had some sort of biblical or historical significance. It was sculpture-licious. The chapel even has its own sculpture-related murder story. At the back of the chapel, there are two ornately-carved stone pillars: the Master Pillar and the Apprentice Pillar. The story goes that the stone-carving master carved the first pillar and it was pretty nice, certainly nothing to sneeze at, so he was pretty proud of it. After carving it, he went away for a bit, to source materials or for a stay at his time-share or something. While he was gone, the apprentice thought, "Man, the master's pillar is some nice, I wonder if I could do something like that." So the apprentice carved the second pillar. And his pillar turned out BEE-YOO-TI-FUL. Like, hella stunning. It has flower spirals coming out of the mouths of dragons and all kinds of symbolism and stuff. When the master got back and saw how fab the apprentice's work was, he did not act graciously at all. He flipped his lid. In his rage, he took a carving tool and booshed the apprentice over the head with it and that was the end of the apprentice. Bad, bad master.

The Master Pillar - pretty nice, right?

The Apprentice Pillar - Wowee!! Now that's some pillar!

A lovely and knowledgeable lady gave a little overview of the chapel for us visitors. You could tell that she was well-versed in Freeman Tilden's principles of interpretation (the tour guides here know what I'm talkin' 'bout). She was droppin' links like they were going out of style. And she was appealin' to cognitive, emotive and sensory learners. That was some boss interpreting, lady.

The most important part of my visit was when I met William, the Rosslyn Chapel Cat. He just sort of hangs round there and gets love showered upon him. Which, I suppose, is the way of cats.

William says "Meow," which means "Hello" in Cat. It also means everything else in Cat too. 

William even has his own branded mug! He's the real deal. 

Well, that's about all I've got on my recent day trips. Wasn't that fun?



Last thing: Just got some hugely exciting news - my sister is coming to visit me next month! Between that and a certain Élyse coming over to this side of the ocean in May, my visit calendar is filling up quickly. Book now if you want to reserve time with me before September!

But actually, having said that, if any of you feel like experiencing the Edinburgh Festival in August (which just happens to be the biggest arts festival in the world, no big deal), you'd have a free place to stay (with me) and have someone to show you around (also me)... Think about it!

A million love to you all!