The weather had been getting steadily warmer to the point where the coat I brought with me is now too heavy, but I still need some sort of light jacket when I go out. Which I don’t have. I went to several shops trying to find something, with no success. I did, however, notice that all of the tags on clothes said “KEEP AWAY FROM FIRE” in bright red letters. Even the towel I bought says this now that I know to look. None of my clothes from the states have this. Why did manufacturers feel the need to say this? Has this been an issue? Were people complaining because the outfit they bought in Marks & Spencer turned out NOT to be fire retardant, imagine that? If I was in the U.S. with our sue-happy culture, I could understand the warning, but Europe seems to assume a certain level of intelligence from its costumers.

Greyfriars Kirk was finally open for visits, so I took the opportunity to go in there.

There’s a Latin phrase written across the tops of the different segments. I asked what it meant, got my answer, and promptly forgot what I had just been told. Something about music. Which makes sense. If it was something about cooking that would be a little weird.

There was a small monument to Bobby near the entrance to the churchyard. Some people had left flowers but the vast majority seemed to have left sticks. Which I’m sure a terrier would appreciate more anyway.

Other than that, and finishing my papers for creative writing, my time was spent going to specific locations just to get pictures of things.

My dad had commented when he was here on the lack of things to do with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the city, especially given the amount of things commemorating Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and Robert Louis Stevenson. My response was “Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh?” Not only was he born and educated here, but the man who inspired Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Joseph Bell, was Scottish as well. This statue and one restaurant near by is the only acknowledgement Edinburgh makes of this. Given how important tourism is to Scotland, this does not seem like a smart move.

There are planter boxes all along Rose Street that have poems along their sides. I don’t think I need to explain why I took pictures of that.

I went back to the portrait gallery to pick out someone to write about. My mother had responded strongly to an exhibit on the Stuart princess Henriette, so that was the first place I looked, but most of her life involved the French court and political relations between France and Britain. Which really isn’t an issue at all until you take into account the fact that I know next to nothing about the politics and monarchy in either country during any time period, meaning I would have to do a lot of research if I wanted to try and write anything about the people shown.

Luckily, right next door there was an exhibit on Women of Nineteenth Century Scotland. Among the women was Mary Somerville, who contributed to the mathematical and scientific field during her time. Normally science and math, while subjects I understand and am good at, aren’t at the top of my List of Subjects I Really Like, but the blurb on Mrs. Somerville spoke to me because her parents tried to actively discourage her scientific pursuits and she went on teaching herself math anyway. Triumph through adversity is a very common theme in stories that people feel are worth telling, and it’s a theme that I respond to. So during the rest of the week I spent time researching her life and reading her Personal Recollections.

“Sorry dad, I can’t hear your concerns that math will make me lose my delicate female mind over the sound of Algebra.”

I also visited St. Giles, though my reason for doing so was a little odd. I’d walked by it before and taken pictures of the outside, but hadn’t felt the need to go in. When my parents were visiting they’d gone in and visited the gift shop, where my mom bought a booklet of stamps, only to later realize that three booklets had gotten stuck together, so she’d accidently robbed the store – which exists to help maintain the church – of two books of stamps. Since they were already back in the states, I was tasked with removing this bad karma. I went to make a donation and paid to take pictures as well.

The Thistle Chapel had an insane amount of details. I shall give you, as an example, this very dejected bear that was carved into one of the seat dividers. Look at him. He just wanted to maul people. Is that too much to ask?

This is probably my favorite stained glass window ever. It manages to accomplish the only goals most stained windows have – telling some sort of story first, being artistically pleasing within each individual frame second – without sacrificing the comprehensiveness of the window as a whole or forcing the artistic side to play second fiddle.

This week also marked the last classes I had for both writing classes. In one we got the opportunity to listen to one of the other teachers at Napier tell his life story, in particular the trips that he’d taken with Habitat for Humanity.

Speaking of houses, this is the second place I’ve seen that house spray-painted and I. Don’t. Know. What. It. Is.

Overall another low-key week. I began to seriously think about what writing prompts I wanted to do for the final assignments in my writing classes. I’m the sort of person that needs to spend a lot of time thinking about something before I start writing, so just having something picked is a huge step. I decided to set one of the stories on Mars (don’t ask,) and do a semi biographical piece for the other one. I didn’t make any concrete decisions on who I was going to write about, but, still, progress.

I also went back to the botanic gardens to go through the green houses they had. It was a pretty miserable day, so being inside buildings meant to house various types of warm climate plants was a very welcome reprieve.

If you thought I was addicted to taking close up photos of architectural details, you clearly know nothing of my relationship with plants.

And circular things. Circular plants or architectural details are the best. I really liked the desert green house for this reason.

I can quit whenever I want.

Beyond that the week didn’t consist of anything beyond hibernation. Sometimes literally. I was like a really lazy, floral obsessed bear.

My mother had mentioned wanting to go to the Royal Botanic Garden, so, since we didn’t get the chance to go when my parents were here, I went on my own this week. Most of it was in that hibernation state where you wonder if everything just up and died on you over the winter and you’re going to have to replant everything. The most obvious example is the Queen Mother’s Memorial Garden. The actual garden part looked like someone had set up the skeletons of all the bushes and shrubs then went to lunch before putting all the leaves on. And then forgot to come back.

There was, however, a hut/house/thing decorated with seashells, so I took lots of pictures of that.

According to the informational plaque – which I actually took the time to read, wonder of wonders – the shells and pebbles used were collected from the beaches by Scottish school children, which is simultaneously adorable and child labor.

There are a couple streets in New and Old Town that have street venders selling the sorts of things that street venders and farmers’ markets usually sell. I adore farmers’ markets and street venders, so I made sure to take the time to check them out. The merchandise. Not the venders.

A couple of my friends also make sculptures out of soda cans, so this made me think of them. None of this guy’s stuff was made using Irn Bru cans though, which, given where he’s selling his stuff, seems like a rather large missed opportunity. I would have bought something from him if there was Irn Bru stuff, but it was all brands that I could get in the U.S., so it felt like I could just make my own. Or get one of my friends to.

On the way back from the venders, I got stopped by a gentleman from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, which I’d never heard of before. I ended up having a very interesting discussion with him about what exactly the group was (they’ve got a website, if you’re interested,) but the most striking thing about the conversation didn’t occur to me until later when I was relying the conversation to friends over Skype. If it had been an individual of any Christian denomination that had come up to me I would have just told them I wasn’t interested and been done with it. I try to be open to all religions, so it was a reality check to be presented with an instance of my own religious prejudice.

The week was rounded off with a visit to the National Gallery. This is different from the National Portrait Gallery. There’s also a National Gallery of Modern Art, because things weren’t confusing enough. There were more sculptures there than the Portrait Gallery, which only had a few busts, and the interior architecture was more interesting.

Staircases. Yet another thing to add to the List of Things I Take Far Too Many Pictures of.

I didn’t make it through the whole gallery, but so far this portion of one of the paintings is my favorite. Just because this horse DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS.

This was the week my parents had set aside to visit, so of course the weather decided it wanted to be Windy Beyond All Belief. I’m more or less used to it, but my parents definitely weren’t. I heard all about it being cold. Which I guess it was, but not that bad.

Since I had people who weren’t on a student’s budget with me to pay for things, we went to visit some of the more touristy places you have to pay to get into.

First up was the Palace of Holyroodhouse, which is where the queen stays when she’s in Scotland. We weren’t allowed to take pictures of the interior, so I can’t illustrate just how much it was a place I would not want to live in. The whole place was full of the crazy amount of intricate detail and empty space that people seemed to think necessary to announce that, yes, these people are important.  The fact that the details are on everything makes the whole place feel stiff. Impressive, yes, but at the cost of comfort.

I finally decided to look up why there were so many images of unicorns around. Turns out its part of the Scottish coat of arms the same way the lion is part of the British coat of arms. I feel like I should have known that. Interesting detail (that I wouldn’t have noticed on my own,) the unicorn, when depicted as part of the Scottish coat of arms, is always shown wearing a collar with a chain attached. Because unicorns are dangerous. Scotland knows what’s up.

Right next door was The Queen’s Gallery, which had an exhibit about the tour of Egypt King Edward VII took back when he was Prince of Wales.

Of course what resonated most with me was the railing. Not the cool pictures or artifacts. That would be too normal of me.

We got to go the Viking exhibit at the National Museum of Scotland as well, though photography wasn’t allowed in the exhibit, so I, yet again, don’t have visuals. The two things that really stand out as worth sharing are 1) Viking is a verb and 2) almost all of our days of the week come from Norse mythology (Thor’s day being the most obvious example.)

And to round the week off we went to the Edinburgh castle.

So of course it had to try to snow. Edinburgh is like that puppy that’s perfectly well behaved until you have guests over.

Castles and palaces serve different purposes, and this was reflected in the sorts of things that were at the castle. Namely mostly military things, up to and including a military museum.

I send separate emails to my friends and family updating them about my status using mostly pictures with some explanation. The reason I keep those separate from this blog rather than just send people here is I tend to take creative license with my descriptions. This photo was accompanied with an entire paragraph explaining that the etchings are to imbue the sword with properties to fight against the supernatural. I didn’t actually read the plaque for this item, but I think it’s a safe bet that’s not actually the case.

Then I got myself an egg for Easter. Since I know little of the candies here, I relied on the tried and true “hey, that box looks cool” method.

The box is shaped like a lion. How could I not buy it? Also, they were out of the Maltesers eggs.

My mom brought me some Easter chocolate from the states as well, and after getting used to chocolate here, I can almost taste the wax. A friend of mine lived in the UK for a while, and now I understand what she was talking about.

This week was almost as slow as the week where I did nothing but work on papers, mostly because the weather decided to throw a temper tantrum.

Thank goodness for the internet. If I’m going to be lazy and unproductive I might as well do so by looking at pictures of cats.

There was one nice day though, so I finally got to get over to the National Portrait Gallery. Since that’s really the only thing of note I managed to do this week, I shall narrate pictorially.

Not actually at the gallery proper, but there’s an outdoor exhibit that’s been set up at key point throughout the city. I believe the exhibit title is “Britain From The Air,” which would explain the broad range of subject matter. If I had to come up with an explanation of the exhibit’s theme on my own, I wouldn’t.

Architectural detail on the outside of the gallery. Because I have a problem. And I find it amusing that this gargoyle is stuck perpetually trying to get rid of an itch.

Seriously cool window with a bunch of important people I either kinda recognize or don’t recognize at all. Who are all old white guys. Except for the Queen up at the top there. She’s not a guy.

If you put a squirrel in anything, it doesn’t matter where, I well find it. It’s either a gift or a curse. Not sure which.

I’ve always had difficulty with classical portraits, mainly because an overwhelming amount of their message and meaning is conveyed through a system of symbology people don’t use any more, so I miss almost all of what the artist was trying to convey. As a result I found myself responding more to the frames than the actual portraits.

Seriously though, what is the actual focus here? One frame actually had full-bodied figures carved into it, but my camera decided to be a diva and not take pictures because it didn’t like the lighting.