The castle entrance.

Our first day in Edinburgh, we were up by 9 and headed out for a walk. We both wanted to see the castle. It was not only huge, there were a ton of things to do once you went in the castle. We randomly joined the first guided tour of the morning. The guide was a very scottish gentleman who clearly loved his job of telling stories to the tourists. We learned about sieges and strife and castle sackings and Ensign Ewart who captured the French regimental eagle at Waterloo.

I took a lot of photos. I’ve discovered I have a total fascination with castles. How they’re built for defense and structured so it’s really hard to take them over. The wall, the moats, the arrow slits, the cannons… all so totally foreign but incredibly awesome.

I am somewhat sad I didn’t get any pictures of the castle from the south, where it’s just a volcanic cliff. The weather gods were not cooperating with me for pictures from that angle, though.

We had a great day at the castle, and we did spend almost the entire day there and we didn’t quite see everything there was to see.

The tour walked us up from the portcullis, past the fireworks setup and the one o’clock gun to the highest level of the castle. At that level there were 3 different buildings to explore: the Scottish war memorial, the great hall and the Royal Palace. The war memorial was beautiful and moving. The great hall is one of the original buildings restored to a Victorian sensibility. The Royal Palace holds the treasures of Scotland, including the Stone of Scone and the Scottish crown jewels. There are also a number of rooms restored to the time of Mary Queen of Scots, including the room where she gave birth to King James VI / James I.

Once we’d finished seeing what we could see, it was raining so we ducked into a cafe and grabbed some lunch. We both had the venison and beef stew with hearty brown bread. Yum.

After lunch, we toured the dungeons. Prisoners of war have been kept in Edinburgh castle since before there were international conventions governing prisoners of war. This became an issue at one point, when the castle was full, but no one could be released because there weren’t ways to exchange POWs. Eventually, there was a prisoner exchange with France and other established nations. Prisoners from the War of American Independence (Revolutionary war) couldn’t be exchanged for political reasons, though.

One of the fascinating things about the prisoners is what they did with very little resources. Many of them took up straw weaving and made elaborate carvings and boxes from bones they saved from their food. They were allowed to sell these crafts to locals through the castle gates.

We watched the firing of the one o’clock cannon. This is a tradition from before the time of accurate clocks. The firing of the cannon gave the ships in the harbor an accurate time mark.

There are also at least 2 museums inside the castle: The National Military museum and the museum of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. A fascinating trip through the history of warfare and military might. Unfortunately, both museums were lit in a way as to not be conducive to photographs.

By the time we’d finished with the second museum, we were pretty tired, so we headed back to the hotel for a nap.

The castle is an amazing bit of history and architecture that towers over the city. And it’s not for show, it really is a fortress. People lived and died there defending their monarch and their country and their peers.

My name is Laura and I have a deep fascination with castles.

The next day we got up and packed and headed off to the train station for our trip to Edinburgh. I took a few pictures of the coast as we traveled up. I uploaded those shots, and a bunch of random landscape and rock photos to flickr. Also some of the pictures I took of Yet Another Castle from the train.

Speeding past the castle

Traveling by train in the UK was fun, reasonably fast and comfortable. We left Bangor around noon and reached Edinburg (with a single transfer at Crewe… I’m told everyone changes at Crewe) around 6:30. If I could high speed rail down to So Cal I’d do it much more often.

It was grey and blustery, but was a very fun day out. I took a lot of photos. A bunch are going up as a walkthrough on my flickr page today. There are others that were more fascination with the decorations and architecture. Also, I indulged my penchant for taking pictures of flags. I’ll get those other shots up soon.

Logging into the blog today tells me I didn’t manage to post anything during December. Thinking back, it was an even more than normal bit of crazy around here. Most of that is because we left for the UK on Dec 22, meaning a month’s worth of work was smashed into 3 weeks. I was a little surprised, I thought I had managed to get at least one post out here, but apparently not.

We had a great trip. We spent Christmas with Steve’s mum and Mike, then headed up to Edinburgh on the 28th. We spent an exciting week vacationing in Edinburgh. Lots of sightseeing was involved and I have some wonderful pictures of the town and the castles there.

We also took part in Hogmanay, which is a 3 day celebration of New Year’s. We started on Dec 30 as part of the torch bearing mob and procession through the streets. Then the 31, there was a giant street party with lots of fireworks. On the first there were city-wide games and visiting.

In addition to all the organized activities in Edinburgh, we visited the Scottish National Museum, some of the Edinburgh underground, Arthur’s seat, Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace, and the Scottish Parliament building. We survived a windstorm that shut down the city and much of the island. It was blowing so hard outside that our hotel was shaking. We took an sleeper train from Edinburgh to London Wednesday night, then spent Thursday playing at the London Science Museum.

Friday we got up early and headed home. I have 500 some-odd pictures which I’ll be uploading over the next few weeks.

I did the first set of Caernarfon castle in North Wales that I took Christmas eve. It was not sunny any of the days we were in Wales, but I was reasonably happy with the lighting for many of those shots. Somewhere I have a collection of pictures from an earlier trip when we toured the castle, I’m going to have to look for those.

I remember I actually have a Nature subscription and can read the article behind the paywall. That one has a slightly different title: Antibody-based protection against HIV infection by vectored immunoprophylaxis. I’m going through the introduction and I see the following sentence:

However, the efficacy of this prophylaxis was limited by an endogenous immune response directed against the immunoadhesin proteins.

A number of things went through my head.

• right.
• wow. that is a lot of big words
• 15 years out of immunology and I still understand all those big words
• that’s a very clear sentence conveying a lot of concepts in a few, big words
• i could never write a sentence using that kinds of vocabulary in my current job
• *sigh* I miss science

Of course at least a few of those statements are wrong. I do understand that sentence and the big words. I am quite amazed at how much of a picture that creates in my head, even 15+ years out. But, I do actually write like that in my current job, then I go through and edit out a lot of the words of more than one syllable. Then I add in 3 intervening sentences to detail the steps from concept A to concept B.

Different audiences, different communication styles.

But, man, I miss the uber specialized language of science.

(Stop laughing. I still believe it. I just know it’s more about how I want the world to work rather than how the world actually works. The facts say I’m wrong that people are always rational actors.)

I learned, though, that there were a lot of people who didn’t want facts. They wanted their biases confirmed and their choices validated. It taught me a lot about online arguing. Sometimes it wasn’t worth arguing with people, it wasn’t worth confronting their errors and biases because they weren’t in a place to hear the facts.

There was one case, though, where I didn’t speak up. And someone lost a beloved pet because I didn’t choose to confront the woo. It didn’t mean I confronted woo more often, but it did mean that I would address bad or poor biology.

I’m currently watching a online friend drive down a road where she is buying into a lot of bad biology. It’s clearly desperation. She isn’t a rational actor because she’s been dealing with this illness for years. I am struggling with interfering. I don’t think what she’s doing is actively harmful, and it’s clear medicine doesn’t have an answer for the problem.

I don’t want to increase her pain or her stress. She’s doing the best she can do. I don’t think this will result in permanent damage. But what if I’m wrong? What if a quiet word about how she shouldn’t trust this website to solve all her problems will prevent harm? Is challenging her conceptions themselves harmful to where she is now?

If only people actually were rational. Then providing facts would not be such a confrontation.

One thing Steve suggested is making a lemon parsley butter for the finish. I think that would be a win.

Overall it was a very yummy meal. Definitely going to make it again.

I’m pleased I seem to finally be getting the knack of fresh pasta. The recipe I have makes enough for 2 of us for 4 meals, so I froze 3 6 oz portions. The rest I rolled and cut into wide noodles.

A very successful dinner overall.

It’s cold and grey here in the bay area today, and between the chill in the air and the sadness around here, I decided to make chicken stock. I’m still not sure what we’re having for dinner, but it’s probably going to involve tons of vegetables and the fresh stock. It’s making the house smell good, but my creativity is broken.

The weather has finally changed here. Finally had to turn the heat on a few days ago. I’ve started looking for long sleeved clothing, too.

The good bit about the weather change is soup and warm bread. Yum.

I did a really good sausage and bean soup a few days ago. We’ve started getting greens in the veggie box, and had leftover collards and bacon. I was thinking about what to do with them, and thought soup.

I first made a broth out of some smoked pork necks we had in the freezer. I simmered the necks, a pair of carrots, half an onion and a stalk of celery in water for a few hours. Then I tossed all the solids, skimmed the fat and used that as the liquid for the sausage soup.

The soup came together easily. I cooked up 2 hot italian sausages after removing them from their casings. Once the sausage was cooked, I added 2 1/2 – 3 cups of diced onions, one stalked of diced celery and 2 sliced carrots. I let the vegetables soften in the sausage fat until they were translucent. Then I added a handful of oregano, some salt and pepper and maybe some other seasonings. Then I poured on the ham stock and a can of black beans and let it all simmer. About 20 minutes before eating, I dumped in the leftover greens and the remaining pot liquor.

We ate it for 2 nights and I finished off the last little bit yesterday. It was one of my better soups, if I do say so myself. We’re definitely making both the collards and the soup again.

• About 1/2 cup of chopped mixed olives
• 3 tablespoons minced garlic
• 2 or 3 anchovy fillets
• olive oil
• 1 tsp capers
• 1 1/2 cups of tomato sauce
• red pepper flakes