Sylvia's Journal

While the US east coast is suffering from a heat wave, here in Scotland I could be fooled into thinking it is already fall. People wear woolen caps and down jackets. It is cold, rainy and windy. I am sure that in two days, back home in the heatwave, we will wish that we were back here. But right now, I could do with some sun and warm weather. 

Yesterday, we woke up to a blue sky and sun, a teaser that didn’t last long as the clouds moved in fast. The weather app on my phone now only shows cloud and rain icons for our last two days here (and beyond). I lost my vacation mood for a moment, but what else can you do than pack your umbrella and clothes for three seasons.  The spring and fall jacket I brought that, back home, I never wear between  June and late September, is on duty most every day.

On the bus to the city we found ourselves surrounded by foreigners: Germans, French, Canadians, and Italians. I suspect this was a fresh batch of visitors who completed their workweek or school year last Friday and flew in on Saturday. 

We went to our second Quaker meeting, but his time we picked the later meeting, the one that starts at 11AM.  As we were racing up to the Old Town against the clock – it was nearly  11 – we saw a Quaker we met last week coming down (having completed the early meeting). We said hello but she didn’t recognize me with my new Glasgow hairdo. She apologized profusely and then told us that, although we were late, there is a grace period of 10 minutes for latecomers.  We slowed down our pace and then climbed the stairs that provide a shortcut to the Quaker House; narrow little alleyways and steps seemingly cut out of the medieval stone in between and underneath the enormous stone buildings of the old city.

The late meeting for worship is better attended than the early one. I counted some 30 people. The last 15 minutes a Jesuit Priest was invited to talk about how Catholics use silence in their worship. He will be followed by representatives from other faiths the next few months after the Edinburgh Festival is over and life returns to normal in September. 

It was an interesting talk and I would have liked to attend the other talks. At the end visitors were asked to introduce themselves and so we learned we were not the only foreigners (3 other people from the US and one Swede). Again, everyone greeting us warmly.

We lingered a bit, Quakers love to talk after an hour of silence, but did not partake in the communal soup and bread lunch. We had a lunch date with our friend R. who lives on the west side of the city. She had visited us last week in Portobello but this time the visit was on her turf, an Art Nouveau style flat that reminded us of the flats where Hercule Poirot searches for clues. Unlike Mackintosh’s designs, this one was all curves, except for the door and window frames, no hard rectangles. 

After lunch we took a short and slow walk (her aging cairn terrier and us all with our arthritic joints and tight muscles). The walk led us through the gardens around a large castle-like estate with a splendid view of the Forth and some very tall and unusual trees one doesn’t usually see in landscapes here.

We ended the cool drizzly day looking for a restaurant that would take us without a reservation. We had good luck at our second try and found a restaurant on Rose Street that served us the mussels, scallops and salmon we craved.  Back home we cared for our sore legs while watching the Scottish version of Antique Roadshow. Outside a storm was raging and the sky was practically touching the earth.