TUBA CITY

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May 14, 2004

Tuba City, Scotland

For the second night in a row, I'm having trouble getting to sleep, so it must be time to try an overseas blog entry. Partly for the sheer novelty of doing so but mostly so that I can multicast an e-postcard to any of you friends who might be reading this.

Got to Edinburgh late Tuesday afternoon after a few frustrating problems with flight delays and missed connections in London. After checking into our crazy Edinburgh hostel (situated on top of a bar!), we met up with the one and only Mike McR., Chapel Hill's favorite expatriated Cat's Cradle/WXYC alumnus. Mike served us up a stellar dinner of Stella Artois and avacodo-laden pasta. Not what I predicted a Scottish meal to be like but outstanding nonetheless! The next day we took the round-the-city bus tour and went to the awesomely positioned Edinburgh Castle. That was followed by more exploration down the Royal Mile trek away from the castle....and along that stretch I particularly enjoyed the tour of the Scotch Whisky Heritage Centre, where I got schooled in some much-needed Scotch knowledge and got to sample some Ballentine's blend and a Glenkinchie 10yo malt. Towards the end of the afternoon, we headed back through the Princes St. Gardens and I got to represent my elders by sitting in front of the scenic Ross Fountain. There were also tons of Ross Clan tartanalia to be purchased in the many Edinburgh souvenir shops....apparently, my clan rolls deep here!

On Thursday we had a brilliant time driving around Scotland with Mike, who picked us up in Edinburgh and took us through Glasgow and farther west, over towards the west coast of Scotland with its lochs and mountains and craggy coastlines. Stopped for a late lunch and a pleasant walk in Oban, an attractive sea town that just happens to have a half-finished Rome Coliseum-like structure ('McCaig's Folly') built above it on an overlooking hill. Strange but very cool. More driving and jetlag-induced napping...and then towards the end of the afternoon we went on a brief unstructured mountain hike in the surprisingly hilly Glencoe area. This was pretty awesome, I didn't realize that this part of the Scotland terrain was going to be so mountainous. After all this scenic driving, it was back to Glasgow so that we could meet up with Mike's mate Stewart for a fun night of chatting, pakora-eating, and drinking in the nearby pub. After a few pints, Mike graciously drove us back to our Edinburgh digs with John Peel's nightly show playing the whole way. From the brief listen it seemed that Peel is somewhat into the USAIsAMonster/BlackDice/Fort Thunder thing at the moment. Cool.

Glasgow seemed very cool in the short time that we spent there so we returned today for a more lengthy visit. The day's itinerary included the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art (partly closed and kinda disappointing), a great lunch at a hip restaurant/coffeeshop called Where The Monkey Sleeps, a visit to the Tenement Museum, more round-the-city bus touring, etc. Finally in the evening we started looking for the record shops that Mike had listed for us and after some navigational struggles, we eventually made it to Monorail, a very cool establishment that was half indie record shop and half organic food coop/restaurant. After a tasty dinner there, we set off to Nice 'N' Sleazy - the scuzzy rocker bar that both Mike and my NC buddy Patrick had recommended we visit. As we walked in, the DJ had just begun to play Mudhoney's 'Touch Me I'm Sick' - a really great omen and total music to my ears after a lot of the more mediocre Brit-pop that I'd been hearing at the hostel over the last few days. Had some quick drinks at Nice 'N' Sleazy before catching the late bus back to Edinburgh.

Tomorrow we're off to England....not sure if I'll feel like traveloguing the London and Oxford stints of my trip. I'll probably have way better internet access, so it's a definite possibility. In the meantime, anyone who feels like unicasting a message back in my direction can drop me a line at tim AT tubafrenzy DOT org. Cheers!

Posted by Tim at May 14, 2004 08:45 PM

Comments

Posted by: cia at May 16, 2004 10:17 PM

Posted by: justin at May 18, 2004 03:39 PM