Tuesday, June 22, 2004 (The Long Day with James)

II was still a little bit tired after getting up, but the weather was beautiful, there was not a cloud in the sky. So I thought about going to Arthur’s Seat after class. But at breakfast, Wendy told us that on the radio news they said that rain was coming up in the evening. I told Wendy that I would call her at lunch about dinner; it was not a problem for her. She would be in Glasgow again today at her mother's.

This morning we were a little bit too early. It was always so different how long the bus took, to go from our host family to school or back. So we walked through the Royal Mile (High Street). I enjoyed it every time and saw some new things, which I hadn't seen before.

Today the whole class had lessons with James until 5 pm. I think that the theme of this day was about getting older. Other themes were “Old enough to be her grandfather” and “Ageism turned her into a liar”. The first script was about relationships, when, for example, the man is 25-year old and the woman is 40 or about the relationships of famous people. The second story was about a relationship in which she lied her age because her boyfriend was a lot younger. But she got in trouble, then after the first lie she needed more stories and that made the problem much worse.

One of Luisa’s friends had tooth problems and they needed the form E111 to go to the hospital. I think that is much different than in Switzerland. If you have serious pain, you made an appointment with “your” dentist and normally you can go within 24 hours. But here, they had to go to the hospital and wait, till they could meet the doctor, and this could go longer than two hours. After the first try, they came back because the hospital had closed earlier that day!

During lunch, I phoned Wendy because of dinner and afterwards, I went to a bookstore. I especially looked at books on architecture and Scotland and so the time flew by. After another Tikka and buying some food supply for the walk on Arthur’s Seat, I ran back to school.

In class we went to the computer room and completed our English diaries in the blogs. Sure, the discussion about age continued.



Arthur's Seat

After class, Elsa went shopping for our walk to Arthur’s Seat and then we started in the direction of the Palace of Hollyroodhouse. We took the Radical Road to the Salisbury Crags and first we thought that was it, we were now standing on Arthur’s Seat … but farther back, there was another, a little bit higher summit … no problem for us as we both liked to walk and so we first went down and then up to climb up to Arthur’s Seat.



Salisbury Crags from Arthur's Seat

The highest point of Edinburgh is the 251m summit of Arthur’s Seat, the deeply eroded remnant of a long-extinct volcano. In Holyrood Park, Edinburgh is blessed with a little bit of wilderness in the heart of the city. It is the former hunting ground of Scottish monarchs. The park covers 650 acres and has a varied landscape, including crags, moor land and lochs.



From Arthur's Seat, direction Leith Docks

On top, we took some photos, ate our picnic and relished the spectacular view over Edinburgh and the Firth of Forth. First I thought that we could see North Berwick in the distance, but at home on a map I was sure that we couldn’t. On this windy place it was cold and I was surprised about the different flora we saw here – just about 2 km away from the castle as the crow flies, amazing.

To go back, we tried another way down, called Hunter’s Bog. We had enough time to talk about sport, holidays, work, the differences and the things in common between the three countries (France, Scotland and Switzerland) and a lot more. We saw the ruins of St. Anthony’s Chapel and St. Margaret’s Loch with a lot of birds in and around the loch. The time went by and we came back to the Palace of Holyroodhouse. I told Elsa about the view from Calton Hill and she wanted to see it too, so we went on and therefore, I stood on Calton Hill twice this week.

With weak knees but very pleased about this nice trip, we came back to Princess Street. A little bit tired and hungry, we waited for the bus home. In the Ross Open Air Theatre on West Princes Street Gardens there was a troupe practising Scottish dance – for the Highland game?

P.S. I had a good discussion with Bill about getting older.