St. Andrew's

Yesterday was St. Andrew's Day. (St Andrew is, of course, the patron saint of Scotland, not that many are religious here, but it's like St. Patrick's Day only less internationally-celebrated.)

On St. Andrew's, Historic Scotland, which runs most of the historical museums/sites has free admission to something like 70 places in Scotland. Here in Edinburgh, the free thing was Edinburgh Castle. Four study-abroad kids from Caltech came up from UCL (London) to visit, so I accompanied them to the Castle. It was pretty cool, because although I went in the beginning of September, this time I had time to see all the things I didn't see the first time around: the Great Hall, as well as three different War Museums, two of which were dedicated to specific military groups. One was the Scottish Dragoons, or something similar. The other was the Royal Scots Army, or something else similar.

Also they completely redid the Crown Jewels part, so instead of climbing stairs and seeing the crown jewels (and scepter and sword and Stone of Destiny) immediately, there was a very extensive exhibition first that directed us through the history of the crown jewels, which was very interesting but a little long.

In the evening we had haggis (mashed lamb/beef/oatmeal/stuff), neeps (mashed turnips, bleh), and tatties (mashed potatoes). Actually I had haggis twice, and it was pretty much the same each time, and a wee bit too peppery.

We also attended a Ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee, like the girls' name) at Teviot student union. It was a lot of fun, of course... everyone loves Highland Dancing, boys in kilts, and Scottish music! Even if the girls outnumbered boys by about two to one. And of course you don't get ceilidhs in London, so our visitors loved it... but were not prepared for the sheer exhaustion! If you've never been, you have no idea how hard it can be. But think about running in a circle for two or three hours and you might empathise.