Comedy Night in Edinburgh

After a second remarkably smooth ferry crossing, we arrived back in Aberdeen at 7 am. I can’t recall feeling any swell at all on the voyage.

The ferry terminal is about two hundred metres away from the railway station in Aberdeen. We wheeled our suitcases across the road and through the Union Square shopping complex to get there. Our train wasn’t due to leave Aberdeen until after 9 am, so we found a seat and waited. A few trains came and went in that time, but the station was never really busy.

Thankfully we were the first ones onto our carriage and we were able to secure a table with seats facing each other and find space to store our heavy suitcases. We were on the opposite side of the train to the one we’d sat on coming up to Aberdeen from Perth earlier in our travels. This side provided us with plenty of water views as the rail line ran parallel to the North Sea coast for a good part of the journey. We passed the famous Carnoustie links golf course and crossed over the Tay at Dundee and the Firth of Forth coming in to Edinburgh.

We’d booked into the Old Waverley Hotel, just a five minute walk from the railway station. It meant we had to cart our luggage up a few steps one more time, but it was conveniently located in Princes Street, right across the road from the huge memorial to Sir Walter Scott and the gardens, and just a ten minute walk from the Royal Mile. Our room is too small to lay our suitcases down in but I no longer care, because we’re only here overnight and then we’re going home. I’ve managed to find a few square inches of desk space to set up my computer to write this blog post, just as I’ve had to do a number of times now.

Only one of our rooms was ready when we arrived, so we put all our luggage in there and went out for a walk around Edinburgh. Marg and I really like Edinburgh, but we hadn’t planned to stay more than one night because we’d spent some time here in 2019 and visited the castle then. Janie and Neil also spent several nights in Edinburgh only twelve months ago.

Once again, Scotland really turned on the fine weather for us. We’ve been here for a month now and I can only recall it raining for about two hours in all that time. Quite a few of the Shetlanders I follow on Facebook had been posting comments about the weather over the past week being quite exceptional. And here in Edinburgh it was a tee shirt day. The sky was blue and cloudless and it was quite warm.

Our first thought was to find somewhere to eat. We walked up past the Melville Monument, which towers over the people in St Andrew Park below. I saw a documentary about this monument recently. Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, was not a good man, in fact he was quite the opposite. He used his influence as a politician to stifle attempts to abolish the slave trade. Historians have calculated that his delaying tactics resulted in up to 630,000 more human beings transported from Africa to the sugar plantations of the West Indies. After slavery was eventually abolished, Melville was impeached, ending his political career in disgrace. The monument was paid for not by the government, but by the people who had benefited from his corrupt politics. There were calls to pull the monument down, but others argued that it is an iconic part of Edinburgh’s heritage and should remain, but henceforth accompanied by a plaque spelling out exactly who he was and what he was responsible for.

Just past the monument we found a cafe run by volunteers in the undercroft of St Andrew’s and St George’s West church. The money the volunteers raise from this enterprise is used to help people in need.

Our walk took us through the Princes Street Gardens. It seems we weren’t the only ones with that idea. Hundreds of people were there, spread across the lawns, making the most of the beautiful surrounds and the glorious weather. We spotted several guys with pale white skin sitting in the sunshine with their shirts off. I suspect they might be feeling rather sunburnt by now.

From the gardens we continued on to Cockburn Street, which winds around to join the Royal Mile. The street shone today with the sunlight falling on the old buildings, and lots of people were out enjoying it. It’s quite a steep climb up Cockburn, as it is in a number of parts of Edinburgh. If you want to take a shortcut, you can move between street levels by finding one of the many narrow alleyways known as closes.

On the Royal Mile, we called in at one or two of the shops. We tried to find the whisky bar where we’d enjoyed a wee dram on our last visit four years ago, but it was gone – possibly another COVID casualty. It was here in 2019 that the World Naked Bike Ride stopped right in front of us, presenting me with a photo opportunity that only comes around once in a lifetime. The street was really busy. From all appearances, many of the people out and about were tourists.

We visited St Giles’ Cathedral. I must admit that I spent much of the time I was in there wondering how it must have been when the Queen’s body was lying in state here in her coffin and thousands of people were filing past to pay their respects.

It was hot, thirsty work walking up Edinburgh’s hilly streets today so we found a pub and enjoyed a cold drink at an outside table – a good vantage point for people watching. We saw some interesting characters go by.

We had to laugh at St Giles’ Cathedral because a fire truck pulled up just as we were approaching it. If you’ve been following this blog, you might recall that we were in Glasgow Cathedral when a fire alarm sounded and we were all evacuated. What is it about Scottish cathedrals and fire, we wondered. Thankfully, there was no alarm and no fire this time.

After returning to our hotel to freshen up, we headed back to the Royal Mile for dinner at a pub nearby, The Advocate. For the umpteenth time, I had haddock and chips with mushy peas, my usual go-to choice in Scotland.

The interesting characters from our people watching earlier in the afternoon were still there, but now extremely drunk. They weren’t hurting anyone, but they were yelling loudly at each other and generally being obnoxious. It was pretty sad to watch. One guy, probably in his fifties and resembling a clone of Johnny Rotten, was dressed in a black suit with yellow Batman logos all over it. The police arrived and were there for about an hour with them. The cops kept trying to talk sense to them, but the group just kept arguing back, wandering away, then coming back for more of the same. Some of the cops walked around picking up all the empties that the group had left lying around. Onlookers stood and watched. Ghost tour patrons followed their guides through the midst of the dispute. The guy in the Batman suit came over and told us that the cops in America and Australia could carry AK47s, but Scottish cops were unarmed before unleashing a string of expletives to give his opinion of them. The bartender from The Advocate and the door guy from the comedy club next door both told us it was a regular occurrence, almost nightly. It was pretty sad, and a costly waste of police time and money.

Janie had bought us tickets to a comedy show for the final night of our tour. Very kind of her. We were getting a sneak peek at four of the performers from this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, due to take place in August. They were using shows like tonight’s to test out their new material. Our seats were right at the front.

The host, Amy Matthews, who has her own Fringe show, was really funny. To start the evening, she turned to us and fired off a series of questions – what were our names, where were we from, where had we been, where were we going, what did we do for a living, were we couples etc. Stand up comedy always fascinates me because I can think of nothing that would get my insides churning more than having to stand up in front of a crowd of strangers and tell them stories to make them laugh for an hour or more. I would be terrified. But Amy had a pattern, and she turned from us to other groups with the same rapid fire questions. Where she excelled was with her quick and witty responses to whatever they said. For example, one patron was a scientist who examined baby poo samples and her partner operates a website for skeptics. Amy came back with a witty retort every time.

The comedians were hilarious. We hit the jackpot with the lineup tonight. I laughed so much I was wiping away tears with every one of them. There was Krystal from Washington state, Susan with her thick Glaswegian accent, Marjolein from Shetland (who’d found out we were there, so pointedly involved us in some of her references) and Vladimir McTavish, also from Glasgow. Vladimir, unsurprisingly, is not his real name. He said it was a popular name with his audiences until a couple of years ago! He questioned whether or not he’d done the right thing with his latest style of hair cut, and he took us through the virtues of swearing. I find stand up comedians a bit hit or miss when I watch the Melbourne Comedy Festival revues on telly, but there were no limits on these guys tonight and they were really, really funny. I wouldn’t hesitate to see each one of them if I was here for the Fringe.

It was after 10.30pm when we wandered back to the hotel. It wasn’t completely dark here in Edinburgh, but I found myself thinking that in Shetland it would still have been quite light.

Tomorrow we fly out at 6pm, bound for stops in Frankfurt and Singapore before arriving home early on Sunday morning, the 50th day of our trip. We’ll be in transit for all of Saturday. It’s been a brilliant holiday in two fantastic countries. We’ve had great company on both parts of our journey and we’ve met many wonderful people. It’s been gratifying to see that international travel and tourism has bounced back from the pandemic, and I’m very happy to have been part of it all once again. Thanks for sharing the adventure with us.