Scotland. Obviously. I've just, in fact, got back from Edinburgh and it's a really pretty place in a dark and grimy kind of way but it's all slightly unreal. Going there is like visiting "ScotlandLand - the tartanest place on Earth™". The whole place is full of tartan shops, tartan mills, whisky shops and saltire souvenirs all aimed at taking money off Americans and Canadians with their 'scotch' ancestors. The only people I saw buying kilts were tourists (yes I did go and have a look at the tartantastic range of goods). It's a pity it is such a parody of itself as it is a really beautiful city but it has no soul, you have to go to Glasgow to get that. Maybe if you get out of the main part of town there is more real life to see but the Royal Mile and Princes street I'd give a miss.
Saying that, the Castle is spectacular and much older than I realised, there's been fortifications there from the stone age, and it's still an operational British Army barracks. I found out that Scottish regiments only stopped wearing kilts in to battle in 1940! Apparently trousers offered better protection. Protection from what they didn't say - thistles in the wedding tackle presumably. The visit to the fortifications was slightly spoiled by the Clannad being played in the Castle café. This is a constant nightmare in Scotland; wherever you go there's bloody bagpipe music. A little I can cope with, a bit of amazing grace with the massed pipes and band of the Scots Guards I can understand, but constant and loud bagpipes in every shop and on every street corner can be terrifying. Even if they are doing AC/DC covers.
The one thing the Scottish do have going is their national pride, they are all very proud of being Scottish. In the long run this may not be a good thing, as I've said before, no good comes from nationalism, but at the moment it seems to do no harm. Mainly lots of flag waiving, massive consumption of Irn-Bru and the local TV stations trying to find the Scottish angle to any story, no matter how tenuous (for example the Queen Elizabeth II - the ship not the monarch - is being sold to be a hotel in Dubai, but it was on BBC Scotland as she was built at Clydebank - in Scotland). But it could turn nasty as the rest of the UK already have to put up with a Scottish Prime Minister (who's not particularly popular), the Chief Minister of Scotland banging on about secession, the Scots getting a better NHS (more free stuff) better education (more free stuff) and cheaper public transport. All being subsidised by the majority of the population who don't happen to be in Scotland. I'm sure I'll get comments about how the Scots can look after them selves and that they don't need English money, "we're a proud independent race" etc. etc. but the truth of the matter is the population north of the border is tiny and the Scottish Parliament spends a lot of English and Welsh money. We'll have to see where it all ends.
All that said it is a beautiful place to visit but the weather can be a bit challenging. I thought I was pretty pale but you haven't seen white people till you've seen a Scotsman in winter.
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