• Make sure you’re not coming to town on the day of the Scottish National Football Cup (which has got to be similar to the SuperBowl or at least a league championship playoff final), not to mention arriving at the train station EXACTLY when a train arrives full of hundreds of already drunk and boisterous Heart of Midlothian Football Club fans all decked out in maroon and white (I had an OU Sooners flashback for a second there) yelling and honking air horns. (I take that back, I can’t be sure that all of them were boisterous.) Lovely. (No wonder I had a hard time finding a hotel.)
• They only have 7 channels here and the movie Braveheart is on one of them this evening while on another channel is something with Billy Connolly talking about a famous fiddle player.
• BBC News is much better than anything I’ve seen in a while for international news without sensationalism or egregious bias.
• People (5) in Italian restaurants (1) eat pizza with a fork and (dull) knife. So let’s generalize for all of Scotland!
• Be on the lookout for fights. I have seen two fist fights already. One in front of a pub on Saturday night (natch) and one right on a main city street between two motorists who were stopped at a light and had some time for the free exchange of ideas. One guy actually got out of his car and was trying to pull the other guy out all the while both were shouting something indecipherable at each other (were they drunk or just with a thick brogue? both? I kid the Scottish.). Not to worry though, as you’d expect, the fights weren’t very dangerous, if these guys could fight they wouldn’t be part of Great Britain… (Again, I kid the Scottish. Try the veal and tip your waitresses!)
• Scottish Tourism Centre people are kind and knowledgeable. My agent was originally from St. Petersburg, but still managed to have a Glaswegian accent. Moreover, they (she) used Google more than any other reference material when we were plotting out some potential travel routes. Interestingly, she would type things like “victorian heritage trail images” to look for pictures instead of clicking on the Images tab/link on the Google results page. Also, they must have browser history set to 0 or turned off which made it hard to her to re-find things she must recommend a lot.
• Hotel “broadband” isn’t. And it’s 17.99 GBP per day.
• Time shifting means I got up at 5:30am this morning. (Read that again if you like, because that’s the only time you’re going to associate that with me.)
• Bus drivers have a good sense of humor.
• Cab drivers are remarkably efficient, intelligent drivers and have spacious, clean cabs. (Just like in London.)
• I already miss iced tea.

Check out some more pictures.