Edinburgh: Being a Tourist

You will find me, should you choose to search, in an old Hotel at the west end of Edinburgh city.
Quaint, alluring…all that crap.
My job, this week, has been removing a rot-damaged floor of the largest room, underneath I found some cool stuff.

A 1950’s newspaper, paint tins, cigarette packets and half-century old glass milk bottles, with milk in them!
(I say milk…it was black. now, I’m no racist… but that is not the colour milk should be.)
Maybe I am easily engrossed, but the newspaper was great fun to read.
Mildly-sexist adverts targeted at house wives, a Mars bar ad trying to pass their product off as some sort of health supplement. I read the whole paper throughout the day.

Why is that anyway? Why is the past so intriguing? I am glad you asked.
The benefit of hindsight makes the past seem like something we can hold in our hand.
The present tense is… well, tense; and the future is often scary. The past can be wrapped up into a warming little film or book that our spongy brains can absorb nicely.

I have come and gone a few times over the last year. I am sure I will return to Edinburgh for the rest of my life and continue to be charmed.
And the past is it’s charm, the architecture, the sheer amount of lives lived here, The castle for gods sake!

Life gets in the way and at times you can take a place for granted. I thought I was getting to know Edinburgh quite well. This weekend I woke up early, took the 44 bus into the city and headed up Calton Hill. I paid the £3 and walked to the top of the Nelson Monument – a good vantage point where you can see the whole city. A view of both the Castle and Arthur’s Seat from one place. I felt like a tourist again, In a city I’ve come to know.

In a way, being a tourist is like being a kid again. Seeing, with fresh eyes, a city you have not spoiled too much with the baggage of your own memories.