Scotland: Beyond Single Malts, Shortbread, and Scarves

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” Robert Louis Stevenson.

My Scotland experience started the minute I hopped onto a taxi outside the Edinburgh airport.

“The Glasshouse Hotel please,” I told the driver as I settled into the backseat of the cab.

“Ach aye,” came the reply.

As he started the car, he turned around and said something in what sounded like a foreign language.

“Can you repeat that please,” I was trying to focus now. I had expected to struggle a bit with the Scottish accent but hadn’t anticipated the level of difficulty.

On his third attempt, my wife figured it out.

“You don’t accept credit cards?” she asked.

“Naw.” He went on to explain something about his credit card machine, which I surmised was not in working order.

As we drove to the hotel, the driver tried to keep us engaged. I got the part about our hotel being a historic building in a central location, close to many major attractions the city had to offer. We would love the city, he assured us. Considering my exposure to Scotland was limited to single malts, shortbread, and Sean Connery, I hoped that he was right.

He was.

As we strolled through the streets of Edinburgh, the weather reminded me of Toronto. Scotland in October is cold and wet. You don’t go to Scotland for the sun.

Yet, the city looked beautiful.

Edinburgh, from an architectural perspective, stands out. Most buildings, especially the ones in the Old Town, had darker facades giving the whole city a gothic feel – at least my take on Gothic.

While Princes Street in New Town Edinburgh, with its upscale stores, bore some resemblance to Bloor Street in Toronto, the silhouette of the Edinburgh Castle and other Old Town structures across the road was unlike anything that you come across in a modern North American city.

The impressive Balmoral Hotel sits majestically at 1 Prices Street, Edinburgh. J. K. Rowling, who has a house in the city, is believed to have completed her last Harry Potter book while she stayed in one of the suites at the Balmoral. Here is a guide to the Top Harry Potter sites in Edinburgh.

The Royal Mile, with the Edinburgh Castle on the one end and the Holyrood Palace on the other, is the most visited street in Edinburgh. Pubs, whiskey bars, and souvenir shops that sell kilts, scarves, and shortbread line the street and is ideal for shopping, dining, and people-watching. If you are expecting bargain prices, you won’t find them here. The Scotch whiskies, that I checked, were priced higher than in Toronto LCBO stores. Nevertheless, I bought a couple.

The Glasgow That I Saw

The train ride from Edinburgh to Glasgow was short, just over an hour.

Click the image to read the Web story on Glasgow.

I had been warned that I may find Glasgow somewhat industrial when compared to Edinburgh.

I found the Glaswegian accent harder to understand.

Glasgow looked more like a North American city without the skyscrapers. Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a Scottish architect, is credited with promoting the Glasgow Style of architecture in the early 20^th century.

One whole day of rain added to our Glasgow experience.

As we visited the major attractions of Glasgow, it became clear that Glasgow has had to do a makeover. The glory days of the industrial boom spearheaded by the shipbuilding industry are long gone, but financial services, biosciences, tourism, and other sectors have replaced it to keep Glasgow’s economy humming.

If you are a shopper, you will find Glasgow more interesting than Edinburgh. The Style Mile, reminiscent of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, and malls such as St. Enoch attract a steady stream of bargain-hunting shoppers — both local and tourists.

If you can fit it in, Stirling Castle, a thirty-mile drive from Glasgow (or forty miles from Edinburgh) is certainly worth a visit.

Apart from being one of the most historically significant castles in Scotland, the castle and its surrounding city of Stirling are breathtakingly beautiful, even on damp and rainy days. If you venture another ten miles, you can see Loch Lomond, a freshwater lake that is considered the boundary between the Scottish Highlands and the Lowlands.

Like the Irish, the Scottish are obsessed with their literary figures. Robert Burns (Rabbie to the Scots) is revered and is regarded as the national poet of Scotland. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, A. J. Cronin, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, and many other writers, poets, and musicians come up in random conversations with the Scots.

There is so much history in Scotland that it is difficult to follow the various conflicts involving the kings, the clans, the church, and others. From wars of Scottish Independence to border wars to Anglo-Scottish wars, the history of Scotland has often been violent. Mary Queen of Scots and William Wallace are just two names among many that represent its bloody past.

Similar to Ireland, Scotland, as a country, has concerns about the impact of Brexit. In the last referendum, Scotland chose to “remain” in the EU while England chose to “leave.”

But for now, they are optimistic.

As the Scots say, “Today’s rain is tomorrow’s whisky.”