General Travelogue - A Long Weekend In Aberdeen - Sunday and Monday

Sunday

Got up early-ish for breakfast (same again; we're boring and neither of us reckoned we could face a full fried breakfast that early #grins#) and set out to find St. Machar's, a medieval church we saw in a travel brochure. It apparently has one of the four best heraldic ceilings in Europe. It was also quite a ways away from where we were, in Old Aberdeen, but it was basically within walkable distance. It was raining, so I unsnapped my hat and Austin bought a small umbrella, and we hiked on into Old Aberdeen, which is very pretty and has more trees than I have seen anywhere in the UK so far.
There was a church service going on when we got there (Sunday morning, duh, we didn't even think about that) so we wandered around the churchyard in the rain looking at the gravestones. It was very pleasant and quiet and some of the stones were beautiful. Some of them were fairly old, too; there were several from the 1670's and 1680's, which is pretty old for those of us from the States. The church itself had been a worship site of one sort or another for over a thousand years (good ley line crossing is my guess) but the church itself dates from I believe the 1500's or so. I'll have to look it up again. (Hey, come on, do you know how many medieval churches they've got here? You can't throw a stick and not hit one. I can't keep them all straight...) When the service was over and everyone had pretty much left (including a nice older man who chuckled at us for looking at gravestones in the pouring down rain- I think his wife may have said something about us not catching cold #grins#) we went inside to look around. The ceiling is lovely; unsure as to whether we were allowed to take pictures we bought some postcards of it instead. It is definitely a working church; the congregation work to maintain its upkeep themselves, with donations from visitors, but instead of resenting the intrusion of two scruffy soaked studenty-looking types (the University is just up the road) they were quite pleasant and helpful. We wandered around ab it, looked at all the carvings and went back out into the rain towards Union Street in search of lunch.
This proved to take a while, as we were both damp and hungry and cranky and everwhere seemed to be full despite it being a fair while past what we would consider the lunch rush. We ended up going to the Old Blackfriars again, because, as Austin pointed out, we might be able to find somewhere *different,* but we were unlikely to find anywhere *better.* Quality over novelty it is.
I highly reccomend the place, by the way. It's always busy, but the waitstaff seem uniformly friendly and helpful, the food is great, and apparently the beer is great as well- it's won some awards from Camra, the real ale people. As mentioned before the building is really spiffy and the atmosphere is nice as well- it seems to be a local place but not in that unnerving, "If you're not local, get out before we throw you out" way that some local pubs seem to have. So yeah, good lunch, and I bought a t-shirt.
More cheerful now, we headed out to St. Nicholas' church, which was practically across the street, but it was too late and it had closed visiting hours for the day. Still, we went around the churchyard looking at the gravestones (no MacAlisters here either) and wandered out the back gate to see what was there. The art museum was there, actually, about a block up the road, and we had an hour until closing so we checked it out. There was a special exhibit on a local painter who predated the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and another special exhibit on Japanese woodblock prints, and a fair amount of interesting modern art in the permanent collection, so there was plenty to look at and we sadly weren't through it all when it was time to go.
We went back to the hotel to dry out a little and have some tea, and then we went out in search of Chinese takeout, which turned out to be harder than we'd thought. We got all the way to the German Fish Festival without finding a place, and decided to get some food from there instead. But they were closing up early due to the rain, so no joy there either. While leaving that we saw a sign for a takeout place, though, called the "New Way, " and they more than upheld my theory that wheverer you go, dedicated takeout Chinese places have the best food anywhere on Earth. We took our haul back to the hotel and sat up far too late watching Dave Gorman's Googlewhack show, which is fantastic you should all definitely make the effort to find it if you haven't seen it already. We also watched fifteen minutes of Badly Dubbed Porn (that's the title, not an editorial comment) which was fairly entertaining (take out the hardcore bits and dub in dialogue, like Mad Movies) but it was neither comedic or pornic enough to bother staying up for the whole thing.

Monday
Alarm at ten; sleep was deemed more important than breakfast. Collected the rest of our stuff, settled bill, checked out. Walked down Union Street to a bakers', then passed it to go tp a tourist information place to pick up gifts to bring back. Got the tea towel that had been requested of us, also some heather honey, postcards, and some awesome chocolate covered ginger cookies. Nearly accidently bought three tea towels, as they were folded together and I hadn't noticed, so I tried to blame that on Austin. Mixed sucess #grins# Went back to bakers' and got some pasties for lunch and some sort of Bavarian cream style things for breakfast. Got to train station about forty minutes early, so wandered around a bit. A map machine ate my pound coin; it turned out that several people must have lost their coin that way as there were several maps jammed up in the dispenser slot. I fussed with my pocketknife for ages trying to lever one out, but to no avail. I'm kind of surprised that no one came up to see what I was doing, considering I was digging away at a vending machine and swearing quietly, but no one seemed to care. I was going to put a sign on it warning others to stay away, but just then the janitor came up and I figured maybe I should leave it until later. So we went to the station pub instead (there always is one, so far as I can tell) and had a coke and a beer, respectively, and waited for the train. The train ride to Edinburgh was unremarkable and I got some great pictures. Not of the seals, though, sadly; there were two this time as well. I saw some gorgeous Clydesdale horses as well. And there was a man in a kilt on the train, which was cool.
The train from Edinburgh sucked, though, as we accidently sat across the aisle from some self-centered jerk who complained about me reading a Fafhrd and the Mouser story to Austin (quite quietly, I might add- Austin had to lean in to hear what I was saying and he was sitting right next to me) Instead of asking me politely to be more quiet, or moving (which I would have done if I sat across from someone who was distracting me) he said, in the most patronizing way possible, "Excuse me, I'm not enjoying listening to that." As I blinked at him in confusion, he added, "Oh, you can move somewhere else, of course." I wish I could convey in print the condescencion and self-interest just dripping off him- it was just instantly infuriating. Now I would have responded positively to, "Hey, I'm sorry, but I'm trying to work here, would you mind being a little more quiet?" or any variation thereof, and I would have happily complied or moved. But his phrasing and tone were both self-satisfied and self-centered, as though he owned the train (not to mention that he wasn't doing work at all, he was drinking a cheap beer and idly fussing with a crossword) and he had this air of "Of course you'll immediately do as I say; I'm obviously the most important person here, " which I have never responded well to. We were both very good and didn't snap back at him (although we were sorely tempted) but I was so angry I refused to move, and put the book down and faced the window and didn't look around or speak for the rest of the trip. Austin did the same, and since we were the only people in that end of the train car he spent the rest of the ride being shunned by the only other people in sight, which I think unnerved him a little. I heard him drop a few things, and he cleared his throat a lot. I could have been a lot nastier but I decided that he was self-centered enough that he honestly wouldn't have understood why we were being angry at him. We also decided that he was definitely a middle-manager type, and that if he always treated people with the same measure of condecension he had towards us, then he probably led a fairly sad life. Plus his subordinates probably did some really amusing impressions of him when he wasn't around. #grins#
At least it was reasonable weather when we got back to York, and we stopped in a pub and had a good dinner, so everything was fine again.

Culture Shock

I was sad not to see any formal occasions going on (weddings etc.) that there might have been formal dress at, as I think men look awesome in kilts- Ewan MacGregor being a particularly fine example. #grins#

Train bathrooms are weird. They have huge spaceship-type sliding doors that you live in fear of opening spontaneously, as the mechanisms seem extremely suspect. I had to push on one to get it to open as it didn't seem to have the power to manage it itself, and who wants to be stuck in a train bathroom for hours on end?