Entertaining Edinburgh

Despite its sometimes dour appearance, Edinburgh rocks, specially at Festival time, when the city parties by day and by night.

A capital city with only 450,000 inhabitants but an astonishing amount of history and culture, Edinburgh is well worth a visit. Known as Auld Reekie, as well as Athens of the North, Edinburgh is a city of contrasts. Auld Reekie, or Old Smokey in English, because before the Clean Air act of 1956 the smoke from coal and wood fires made the city dirty and smelly (as well as cold, rainy, windy). Athens of the North for the city’s great architectural beauty, its many neo-classical buildings. The nickname also stems from the fact that it was one of the intellectual centers of the 18th-century Enlightenment, when philosophers cast off the yoke of the established churches and starting thinking for themselves and asking questions about the world, where it came from, what it was for. Ah, the Scottish Enlightenment; I love thinking of those times, when men (no women yet) like Wealth of Nations author Adam Smith, David Hume, William Robertson, met in coffee houses to talk and think about man’s place in the world, to found the Encyclopedia Britannica and support American independence.

City of Contrasts - Old Town: New Town
The medieval Old Town, the Georgian New Town, both UNESCO World Heritage sites, have the greatest number of listed buildings (i.e. buildings of special architectural or historic interest) of any city in Britain. The neo-classical Georgian New Town is only new compared with the Old Town, it was actually built between 1765 and 1850 and is remarkably intact. At the center of the Old Town with its narrow streets and secret hidden alleyways stands Edinburgh Castle, brooding like a fortress over the city on its ancient rock foundation. The main street through the Old Town, known as The Royal Mile, leads in a virtual straight line from the Castle past St. Giles’ Cathedral, the law courts, the new Scottish parliament, to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Queen Elizabeth’s official residence in Scotland.

Jeckyll & Hyde
The classic tale of a split personality, the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was of course written by Edinburgh author Robert Lewis Stevenson (1850-1894). As a student at Edinburgh University back in the 1970s, walking the streets of Edinburgh on my own on foggy November evenings I frequently imagined evil Mr. Hyde prowling the streets, planning his wicked deeds. Other favorite Edinburgh criminals, real ones this time, were Deacon William Brodie and Burke and Hare. Deacon Brodie, like Dr. Jekyll, for whom he may have been the inspiration, led a double life, a respectable pillar of society but also a gambler and thief who was hanged for his crimes in 1788. Deacon Brodie’s Tavern stands at the top of the Mound on the corner between Lawnmarket (part of the Royal Mile) and Bank Street and is a favorite bar not just with students and rugby supporters. Burke and Hare: wicked? yes, but they did help medical research. In the early 1800s, Edinburgh Medical College, like all other medical faculties, urgently needed corpses to dissect in order to learn how to treat live people. In those days people did not donate their bodies to science, thus grave robbing was a common practice. William Burke and William Hare cut out the middlemen by actually murdering 17 people and then selling the corpses to Professor Knox at the Medical College. When they were found out, Burke was hanged, but Hare was allowed to go free and in 1832 a new law was passed to make it easier for medical faculties to obtain cadavers legally.

Intensely independent but also warmly cospomolitan
The Scots used to have their own parliament but a century after the Union of the Crown in 1603, when King James VI of Scotland moved to London on the death of the unmarried and childless Elizabeth I to become King James I of England and VI of Scotland, and following some disastrous financial investments, the original Scottish parliament voted itself out of existence in 1707 with the Union of England and Scotland, which brought about the Parliament of Great Britain.

But in a referendum in 1997, the Scottish people voted to bring back a Scottish parliament which was established in 1999. The new parliament was located in temporary housing from 1999 until September 2004 when lawmakers moved into a stunning (and stunningly expensive) new building opposite Holyroodhouse. The new parliament building, designed by Barcelona architect Enric Miralles, is well worth a visit. The one-hour guided tour which lets you visit sections not otherwise open to the public costs £6 (a bit less than 8 Euros). Republican and egalitarian in spirit, on the official opening of the new Scottish parliament by Queen Elizabeth II on October 9, 2004, lawmakers sang Robert Burns’ “A Man’s A Man For A’ That” but most Scots still have warm feelings about the Queen, and those who are lucky enough to receive an invitation are happy to attend her annual garden party at Holyroodhouse in early summer. The Scottish parliament is part of a continuing process of devolution within the U.K. The Scots have their own parliament (and legal and education systems as well as church, soccer and rugby teams) but nevertheless send 59 members to the British parliament in London.

The Festival
I always like to visit Edinburgh during festival time, when the influx of tourists doubles the population and turns the city into a day-and-night party. The official festival, the Edinburgh International Festival, is an international program of classical music, theater, opera and dance.

2012 Festival dates are 9 August - 2 September. See www.eif.co.uk for information and be sure to reserve tickets and hotel rooms early.

The Festival Fringe runs approximately in parallel to the official festival (2012 dates are 3 - 27 August) and features an eclectic mix of student theater, music and performance. Not all of it is top quality but most performances are short, less than an hour, so you can see several performances in a day, and some of them turn out to be winners. The Fringe website is at www.edfringe.com but unlike the official festival where it is wise to book tickets early, Fringe tickets can usually be purchased at the Fringe box office a day or two in advance. The Fringe has become so successful it actually has its own spin-off, the Comedy Festival, which although part of the Fringe has its own website at www.edcomfest.com.

Favorite restaurants
Edinburgh has plenty of restaurants where you can enjoy a late dinner after a performance. In 2008 and again in 2009, we liked an Indian restaurant called Saffrani at 11 South College Street (but vegetable dishes were better than fish or meat) and in 2008 we were amused by the retro Indian Cavalry Club in the West End. Wok & Wine on Frederick street in the New Town featured fairly good Chinese food with a surprisingly good wine list in 2008 while in 2009 I thought the food was better and the wine less exciting.

For fine dining, head for the port of Leith, about 15 minutes taxi ride from the city center. One street, simply called Shore, hosts some of the best restaurants in town, including The Shore Bar & Restaurant at number 3, Fishers Bistro next door at number 1, both specializing in really good, fresh fish dishes, and one of the best restaurants in Scotland, my current favorite, Michelin-starred Martin Wishart at number 54. We also liked chef Tom Kitchin's The Kitchin, and the Plumed Horse, both in Leith. Back up in town, we enjoyed fantastic fish at Fishers In The City, the city seafood outpost of the original Fishers on Shore in Leith.

If you are a fan of extremely sweet candy you won’t want to miss a local specialty, Edinburgh Rock, soft, crumbly pastel-colored cubes or sticks consisting almost entirely of sugar.

World-class museums and galleries
As befits Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh is home to the National Museum of Scotland, which is often referred to by locals as the Chambers Street Museum for its location. The museum’s award-winning rooftop restaurant, The Tower, features great views and pretty good cooking; if you want to dine there in the evening, best make a reservation (www.tower-restaurant.com). Other “nationals” include the National Gallery of Scotland, home of many people’s favorite Scottish painting, Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch painted by Sir Henry Raeburn around 1795. Both the National Gallery and the Royal Scottish Academy are on The Mound, the hilly street just below Edinburgh Castle which connects the Old Town with the New Town.

My favorite Edinburgh galleries are the Scottish National Portrait Gallery at 1 Queen Street in the New Town, and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art at 75 Belford Road which has works by Francis Bacon, Roy Lichtenstein, Matisse and Picasso as well as paintings by Scottish artists such as John Bellany and the Scottish Colourist Samuel Peploe. The American landscape architect Charles Jencks’ gorgeous, Gulbenkian award-winning “Landform Ueda” is basically the Gallery of Modern Art’s wonderful front garden. Lovers of modern gardens who have seen Landform Ueda will long to visit Jencks’ private Garden of Cosmic Speculation at his home at Holywood near Dumfries in south-west Scotland, open once a year as part of Scotland’s Garden Scheme – (www.gardensofscotland.org) – or by applying in writing to Charles Jencks. Devotees of “ideas” gardens will probably also like Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta, about an hour’s drive south of Edinburgh, which is open on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday afternoons from mid-June through September. Info at www.littlesparta.co.uk. My final favorite is a small, modest gallery that nevertheless frequently has good temporary exhibitions, Inverleith House, which is in the grounds of the Royal Botanic Garden on Inverleith Row.

The weather can be miserable but the city never is
Edinburgh is a city where a good summer day has temperatures in the mid 60°s F and the sky is as often gray as blue (patriotic Scots claim to love the soft light that comes with such weather), where heavy gusts of wind can catch in the long skirts of skinny women enabling them to fly through the air like Mary Poppins. I spent my rural teenage years longing to live there, I loved the four years I spent there as an undergraduate, and I still love to visit it. Don’t visit for the weather but do visit; Edinburgh is a lively place with friendly people – you'll enjoy it.