Tour Guide

This weekend my friend Sarah, who is also American, was visited by her cousin, who is English. He had never been to Edinburgh before, so we took him out to see the city, or at least parts we were familiar with.

On Sunday night we wanted to see the Rugby World Cup match between Scotland and Argentina. Of course no one really has a TV--there is a television tax in the UK, and it's cumbersome to begin with--and the TV in the common room was in use for a football match. Where do you go to catch an important sports game? The nearest pub, of course. There is one right across the street from our dorm complex that clearly caters to students, plus it has the biggest TV of any of the pubs I've seen yet.

Sadly, Scotland lost by the margin of one score (19-13, a try is 5 and a successful dropkick is another 2, to make it a 20-19 win), but I still very much enjoyed the game. After it ended the place cleared out but we stayed on a little, and were fortunate enough to catch an American football game! SD Chargers and Denver Broncos, teams I don't really care about, but it was still amazing to see an NFL feed from CBS played on Sky Sports.

Apparently Edinburgh has an American football team, comprised of guys from all the city's universities, U. Edinburgh, Heriot Watt, Napier, possibly one or two others. That's how small the interest is, but I'm still impressed there's enough to create a team.

I also had the opportunity to explain to my guy friends the basic rules of American football using analogies to rugby rules. How cool is that.