Stuff We Miss

We've been in Edinburgh for ten weeks, and there's a number of things that simply aren't here. There's the obvious stuff we miss, like our families and friends (and Lucy, Sneakers, Alexis, Jimmy and Jack).  But then there's all that other stuff.

For example, I'm missing

• french vanilla cappuccino and cinnamon sugar doughnuts from Tim Hortons
• fluffy pancakes
• cheesies
• new seasons of US tv shows, like The Office and My Name Is Earl
• borrowing the car
• perogies
• important events, like weddings of good friends
• washing our hands and face with warm water
• familiar coins, the 12 hour clock and automatically knowing which way to look when crossing the road

And then there's the stuff I'll miss when we leave, like

• so many good britcoms, on tv and on cheap dvds at HMV
• walking around the corner and seeing Edinburgh castle
• excellent shopping
• Boots pharmacy and free prescriptions
• no snow
• the history
• a washer/dryer under the kitchen counter
• the ability to travel from one end of the country to the other in under 12 hours

I'm really happy we're heading home to Southern Ontario and Tennessee for Christmas (Tim Hortons, here I come!).  And I'll also be happy to come back home to Edinburgh.

Noisy, Noisy Nights

We live in a great location, with convenient access to the university, a five minute walk from the Royal Mile, and quite close to excellent High Street shopping over on Princes Street.  There's lots of little pubs and coffee shops along the street, and we can walk to the farmer's market on Saturdays and see a beautiful view of the castle.  Not bad for school accommodation.  In fact, its really a great place to live, except for one small problem: noise.

One of the main contributors to our noise problem is construction.  A hotel has been in the works next door since before we moved in, and this causes issues every day.  They work from 7am to about 4pm, 7 days a week.  The skip comes at 6:30am, so thats when most of us in the building wake up, at least temporarily.  At night they string up tarps to shield materials from the rain, but with the strong winds these tarps often sound like its pouring rain out.

More construction has started at the bus stop across the street.  For those of you following our music story, this is the same bus stop where the band plays around midnight on random evenings.  Luckily, the awful music has come to and end, at least for the moment.  The problem with this latest construction site is that they've dug up part of the road and lay boards across it at night.  Because the street is one of the major routes from the Royal Mile to the south of the city, there's traffic all night long rolling over these boards making so much noise!  

Being close to the university does have its downfall.  The student union runs a number of pubs and dance clubs, many of which are just across the square.  This means almost every night we get a long wave of drunken students heading home at 3am when the clubs close.  Yawn.

There are ways to make it better.  According to our British neighbours, if the windows had double-glazing, it'd be much quieter.  Derek has plans for a removable wooden shield in the window.  If we stayed up until 3:30am every night, the clubbers should have all gone home and we'd have about 3 and a 1/2 hours of quiet.  Or we could make what we did last night permanent: set up our mattress in the living room, which faces out into the courtyard at the back of the place.  We'll keep you posted!

Bonfire Night

Last night our neighbours Jen and Steve escorted Derek and I to our first Bonfire Night.  Every 5th of November Britons celebrate the defeat of the gunpowder plot of 1605 by holding large bonfires, fireworks displays and occasionally burning effigies of Guy Fawkes.  We might not have seen any burning guys, but there were some excellent fireworks to oo and aw at.

Around  7 pm the four of us trekked up to the very top of Calton Hill in the centre of town.  This smaller hill (compared to Arthur's Seat) is the site of a number of monuments, including the large, unfinished war memorial that was meant to look like the Parthenon.  It was very misty and in the dark, as we ascended into the clouds of fog and smoke, it really did look like the setting of a good horror movie (so I'm told).   

At the top of the hill crowds of people were looking out over the city lights, watching fireworks exploding all over Edinburgh.  It reminded me of New Years back in our Waterloo apartment, standing on the balcony to watch the celebrations.  We also saw a number of fire trucks racing through the narrow streets, probably dealing with the aftermath of amateur fireworks displays.

The fireworks display closest to our spot was excellent.  Well-timed and full of multiple bursts of colour all going off at one time.  It was really beautiful.  The funny part was when they would set off a really high firework, the type that explodes into a huge sphere high above you and makes you gasp, it would explode above the clouds so all you could see was a red or green burst of colour somewhere in the clouds.  Overall, an excellent evening.