Visit to the homeland

Posting this a little late, but last weekend I went to Scotland and checked out both Edinburgh and Glasgow. Becky met me up there, and on Friday night we went to a really good restaurant called the Witchery, just down the street from Edinburgh Castle..

Apparently this is actually where they used to hang all the "witches" back in the day, which is pretty intense (witch is pretty intense, hahaha   ha      ha). It was on the street called the Royal Mile. At the end of the street is Edinburgh Castle, then along the street are a bunch of government buildings, churches, pubs, touristy shops and Mary Kings Close.

Edinburgh Castle

High Kirk of Edinburgh

More churches...

Mary Kings Close was pretty crazy. Essentially the Old Town of Edinburgh used to be a bunch of really tall buildings that were really close together, and the only streets between them were alleyways only like 6 feet wide, called "closes". At some point they just decided to build a building *on top* of these buildings, and essentially bury the old closes. I still have no clue why they decided to do this - maybe it had something to do with all the plague-spreading going on in the closes. Some of the closes still exist, but many of them are buried, and are essentially just a hill now. We went on a tour of Mary Kings Close, which was pretty cool and kinda creepy. Along the Royal Mile there are also a ton of tourist shops, all of which have a ton of things with my last name on them (you know, Robert the Bruce King of Scotland being my ancestor and all...)

A booklet with the Bruce family history and the family tartan (plaid pattern) on it...

Bruce shot glass...

lions and tigers and plaid, oh my!

They are really crazy about plaid over there. Even the hotel room was decked out in plaid in every possible way...

On Saturday night we took the train over to Glasgow and met up with my high school friend Patchee and his wife Shona. We had a good dinner and some scotch and beer in a cool bar in Glasgow. It was good to see them since I hadn't since their wedding last summer.

Patchee and me

Shona and Becky

Oh and one last thing, what trip to Scotland would be complete without some bagpipes!

Wandering around Amsterdam

For the first weekend in a while I had some time to chill in Amsterdam, so I took the chance to wander around and see some of the sites and areas of the city I hadn't seen. It ended up being a really nice, clear day, even though it was a little cold.

the usual canals, houses and houseboats

and some crooked houses...

ATL!

And of course, like in any European city, I found some more cool towers and churches.

Munttoren, used to be part of the old city gate

Zuiderkerk

Sint Anthonispoort (Saint Anthony's Port), another of the former city's gates, which now has a restaurant in it

There are also a ton of lights which are hung over various streets throughout the city. I think it's just a winter thing, and some of them were clearly Christmas related, but maybe some of them stay up year round?

Kinda cool. Also, as I was getting back to my apartment I saw a huge blaze at the end of my block. The first thought was that part of my block was on fire, which was a little terrifying, but it turned out to be something like a big neighborhood bonfire. I guess every year they take all of the Christmas trees from all of the houses, and instead of recycling them into woodchips or something they just set them on fire and bring their kids to watch the show. Whatever floats your boat...

Oh, and one more addition to my list of things people do on their bikes... pulling their luggage.

2011 is here

It's been a pretty hectic first week back at work, so I haven't been able to update on the holiday happenings, but better late than never...

After a good stay at St. Kitts I went back to Atlanta for a few days to celebrate Christmas with the family and just relax a bit. Then it was back to Amsterdam, where my flight was connecting through Heathrow (which had seen tons of delays due to the same storm I hit when I was leaving) and was delayed a couple hours. Luckily, I was able to get on a direct flight flying standby, which got me to Amsterdam right at the same time as the one, the only, Jeff Chang!

Jeff came to visit for a few days and we had a good time bumming around the city, visiting coffeeshops and bars and eating lots of unhealthy food. We did also do some marginally intellectually rewarding activities like go to the Van Gogh Museum, which was pretty cool, but mostly we just hung out. Unfortunately I didn't remember to bring a camera anywhere, and against all odds Jeff didn't actually twitpic anything from his time here, so I have no pictures for you.

After a good few days we both left on New Years Eve for our separate New Years destinations - Jeff to Montreal and me to London. I met up with Becky and another of her friends and we went to a bar on the Thames to watch the fireworks over the London Eye.

there were definitely more people capturing the fireworks on their cell phone / camera than watching with their own eyes. kinda sad.

There were quite a few people there and the fireworks were really good, but I don't think they make nearly as big a deal about it as New York. Regardless, a very fun time, and it's always cool to see how they do holidays in other cities. The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing, eating at some good restaurants, and watching some bowl games (!), so no complaints there. After that the all-too-short break was over and it was back to work on Monday. I've got one trip to Scotland coming up, but other than that I should be chilling out a bit on the travel front and spending some more quality time in Amsterdam. Til next time...