jumping jack and mary king's - continue day 2

the last words anders left before leaving chalmers again yesterday evening was
"work harder..."
then he turned and walked two steps away, and turned back and added
"and play harder!"
and he was gone...

doesnt it sound too close to wot we have here, in the right hand column >> for april?

blah, anyway, lets continue ^^
i'm skipping detailed desciptions of "the legendary tour guide LILY's tour" :P
aish, this will be really tough, doing it chronologically... coz we went back to many places again with "the legendary tour guide RUTH's tour" on the 3rd day... anyway, bear with me ba :)

let de pictures do the talking~

edinburgh castle, or hogwart's shadow #1...




george heriot's school, or hogwart's shadow #2... aye, the grey one. the one with four towers that later become the four houses of gryffindor, ravenclaw, hufflepuff and slytherin ^^ it's a school for royalties and nobles.



white lily and black choylan in edin~


edin~~








tartans and kilts, and the machines making them



this one requires a bit of explanation~ remember there's a third step in hogwart's dunno which floor's stair case which is a trap stair? here is how the old school edinburghian anti burglar system looks like from the outside. the 3rd step is not build for the size of a human foot ;)



one of my fav pics ^^ weather is important... :P




Mary King's Close (no pics allowed underground)
we assembled at the murky entrance stairs (probably the only functioning one left) to the under world of edinburgh at around 8.30pm. greeting us there was Mary's own daughter, a lovely 400-yr-old "young" lady, gracefully dressed in the fashion of her time, a dress of scarlet, laced in white, unmissable even in the dark of the underworld. her also unmissable scottish accent and her walking posture with straight back and fluid steps also proclaims her a well breed medieval edin middle class young lady. too bad i forgot her 芳名 XP

the original medieval town of edin was a matrix of 9-14 stories tall blocks cramped together. mary king's close, the busiest and most spatial of all streets, is barely 2.5 meters in width. now that's a good reason why they are called Closes... the poor, living in the lower level literally lived in the shadow of their betters, as the sunlight never shown at those quarters.

the sadin canned town was surrounded and protected by reinforced walls like a fortress. as the population swelled, they built higher and higher up within the wall, creating the world's first ever high rised buildings settlement.

somewhere in time, the plague came, sweeping away 1/3 of the whole population of edin. half the residence of mary king's close died among them. living in such close quarters and with virtually no sewage system at all, it is not unexpected.

the low ceilng of each level proved not to be architected to accomodate us modern day giants. well, not exactly in the case of yean and i but most male time travellers that night needed to take constant care watching their heads if they prefer not to bring fragments of the ceilings which were made out of 400 yrs old human ashes, horse hair and cement, back to our time.

mary's charming daughter took us down several levels of deserted chambers, showing us the homes of her long lost and long missed neighbours, their professions which includes doctors and scientists, the way they used to live, where their barns and stables were, and finally decending down onto the once buzzling Close that was named after her mother, a well respected merchant and resident of the Close. This once busiest street of edin, is now reduced to being its foundation, continuing quietly to bear the weight of the town...

some display at the entrance to the UG world

bugeee~~~~ the mask the doctors used to wear when they treated their plague eaten patients. the long nose was used to stuff spices that was believed to act like anticeptics.

and that's the absorbing end of day 2~
day 3 continues in historically and scenically rich edin. more pictures to come, if you are not already tired of them ^^

ow, and our first 1000hrs aged rubbers came out of their warm womb welcomed by the taste of strawberries~~~~ testing them on monday :D

from modern glasgow to retro edinburgh - day 2

anders is back in chalmers using the SEM and will probably stay until friday~~ so happy to see him again ^^
and jason balik kampung dy... one less malaysian in sweden...
anyway, lets continue the journey shall we? :)

our breakfast room that second day... was a lounge...
biscuits and tap water for breaky anyone? XD well, we knew we were likely to have heavy meals later that day, since we were meeting choy lan and lily, our private tour guides in edinburgh at noon ^^

and easter was coming

aye, glasgow was juz a stopover, lets go to old school edinburgh~ taking peynie's words, we alloted two full days for edinburgh where glasgow the capital city of celtics and rangers and fergie has only earned two miserable nights XD

on de bus to edin~

we bunked at the border of the "new" town in edinburgh, which is 300yrs "new". climbing up to the hostel is like climbing batu cave...

our hostel bathroom, ahem... 18PL wei...

looking out of the only window in our dorm...

lets go out a bit~~
the view of old town from new town :D






we met choylan and lily at burger king, high calory lunch there and off we go to rosslyn chapel! aye, there lies the holly grail! (according to da vinci code the novel la...)

here are our lovely hosts on the doubledecker to rosslyn that was constantly approaching lamp posts and traffic lights and corners of buildings at too high a speed ^^
oh, right, it was right-hand-drive again~

a shot of edinburgh castle, one half of original hogwarts, and a church at the foot of the castle from the moving bus :P

bus is good~ 满天满地de daffodil~~~

again on the bus~

to be honest, rosslyn chapel was a disappointment :P probably becoz of too high an expectation i had. anyway, true to dan brown's descriptions, it is a baby of a chapel. gothic, planed to be build in the shape of a cross, the chapel is less than half finished when war came and the Sinclairs fled, abondoning the construction and the chapel, as it was 1/4 its planned length, and 1/2 the width.

moreover, the originally pinkish/orangy stone the chapel is made of is weathered black and green as it stood abandoned by its family. when the victorians came for restoration under the order of the queen, they painted it grey as it looks today, and that sealed in the moisture that was eating the stone like acid ="= so, now, they build a dome on top of the chapel to shelter the abandoned little orphan against rain, and keep the wet baby constantly airy in an attempt to ventilate and hopefully finally dry it out again.

cameras are prohibited inside the chapel, and the skeletal scaffold of 7850kg/m3 (steel, my friends, density of steel. pls forgive a mechanical + material engineer) cradling, or maybe a better word would be engulfing, the baby from outside. on top of that, we did arrive in a windy + rainy not-quite-spring-yet afternoon. so, pictures? forget about it...

nah, i do have a few to show :P this one is peeping in from the side door. you can see de pinky/orangy colour is comingling with the green and black.


having said that, still, like many famous medieval catholic churches, the carvings in this one, on the window frames, walls, pillars, roofs and basically all over the interior of the chapel are breathtakingly done with exceptional details. the well-debated controvertial figures regarding christianity, among which lurked the famous green man, the swap between greed and charity for their respective places in the 7 holy virtues and the 7 deadly sins, and more... aiyah, go wikitravel and look up la... XP

in the rainy afternoon and in the tea house outside de chapel, our very nice and patient hosts waited on ^^

end of rosslyn chapel and half de day had barely gone by!! back in the centre of edin nxt post, where the two real life models of hogwarts will be revealed~~ and the spooky Mary King's Close to haunt ur nightmares ^^ well, believe it or not, they say edin is one of the most haunted city in the world ^^

aye laddie and lassie, here we are in glasgow - day 1

if u need translation, that reads "yes boys and girls, here we are in glasgow" :P

travelling light this time, very good, coz i din bring my travel diary and now i cant find the 1st piece of paperful of my scribled handwriting...

anyway, good luck with ur finals june! chonghwarians rulez~ XD
then, somehow almost everyone who are closest to me msn-ed me today... so that's wot happen if i online whole day at school ha? sorry if there was a lack of reaction, i betul-betul half mati after 3pm XP love u ppl :)
juz got home from the north late last nite, and juz back from 1st day at work, and c'mon this is suppose to be a travel post ="= but i'm so tired right now... let me go take a shower 1st... XP

back~ oh, here's de piece of paper. lets start then~

disclaimer 1: i'll skid thru part of the trip like pebbles skidding on the mildly wavey surface of Loch Ness. objections? no? okej~ XD

disclaimer 2: some insisted that we should be in the picture, so i myself will appear quite frequently this time around. pls dun say i zi4 lian4... XP

hooiching jiejie came to see us off, so gandong~~~ she decided tht it's good to leave some evidence of how light we were travelling.

the thing about travelling to english speaking countries is that inevitable home coming feeling... geez, i am suddenly capable of eavesdropping without focusing all my radar to one single piece of conversation~

the first person we talked to after getting pass the UK custom gave us a short ride on his empty bus so that we dont have to cross the bridge to get to the other side of the road. wot a wonderful first impression the heavily accented scottsman made ^^

de first thing that caught my attention on our way to fergiecity-glasgow from prestwick airport was that 满天满地的 daffodil :D they do bloom slightly earlier than sweden :) pictures of them coming later in the posts~ otherwise, everything was quite england-like, which really shall be expected :P

we decided to walk to our hostel from buchanan bus station, which took us thru de pedestrian walk on sauchiehall st. which only has one door left open for business at that time of the day. we went in the door that belongs to sainsbury, a franchais supermarket to get our 1st meal in the tartan and kilt land~

hello glasgow, buchanan bus station at dusk.

sauchiehall pedestrian st.

our dinner, chocolate pain for yean, banana muffin for me, and strawberry triffle for both~ 2 pounds all together~ cheap and delicious if not nutritious, compared with sweden ^^

the man (also with a heavy scottish accent) who came and made us take a pic of him during our dinner XD

as we marched on with our belly full, we found that sauchiehall is a happening st full of shops and restaurants and pubs and bustling with ppl and traffik.

one thing that yean almost immediately noticed about glasgow is the concentration of guards and security cemeras. even in tiny takeaways and supermarkets that lines at either side of the busy street. and couple that with the fact that we arrived on friday night, when glasgow is saturated with drunks, both local and foreign, which include one of our fellow flightmate who announced that he was there to "bara dryka" or "just drink" for the weekend. now, imagine the glasgow we saw, aint it wonderful? ^^

i later saw a man lying at the corner of the street, head covered in blood, and using all his might to push off his mate who was trying to help him stop the bleeding with a role of kitchen paper... shhh... dun tell yean...

as we strolled down sauchiehall street taking in all these, the night crept slowly pass. we arrived at our hostel around 9.30, welcomed by a role of dutiful scotch whiskies taking watch at the foyer XD see ur glenfiddichessss, dad?

that's yean checking us in. and there we shared our 1st nite in bag pipe land with two german young ladies who was also going to hunt poor nessie.

good nite glasgow.... yawn~~~

that's de appetizer today, prepare for tones of pictures coming from the medieval wonder in de name of edinburgh ^^

happy easter ^^

eggs for those who havnt found any in the bushes yet ^^

ah, one day stopover at home. we talk about scotland later k :)
oh, just for starter, picking up where we dropped off the last post, the famous "Auld Lang Syne" is a scottish song~~~~ >>
lets sing~
should old acquantance be forgot and never brought to mind~~

oops, wrong song for the wrong festival XD

trying to make sure i dun leave lisa any headache...

ok, gone thru de list for the 3rd time... hopefully lisa wont call me when i'm sneaking behind the guards in celtic's stadium to pluck a grass and cry in the phone because our oven blows up~~

ok, paid karin april's rental... hopefully she wont call me during my dental surgery experiments with nessie because she decide to turn me out to sleep beside the snow drops and bee flowers due to overdue rentals~~

ok, havnt tell my supervisors i'm leaving >_< hopefully they wont call me when i'm one leg over the window into fergie's house trying to pinch a family photo of him in scottish tartans because exjobbarer or thesis workers dont officially hav any leave~~

ok, hopefully u ppl oso wont call me while yean watch my encounter with scotch whisky. oh right, dad, u want some? 18yrs glenfiddich oh~ fuiyo, your glenfiddich's kampung is so close to loch ness... maybe nessie is not shy, but just always drunk~~

i bet empty whisky bottles are the most efficient tools to catch pontianak-like scottish fairies also~ since i probably can only see them after emptying the bottles~~

tell me a scottish song that i can sing along and annoy yean during the hike :)