Where to begin. This was an awesome trip.
Jen and I went to Edinburgh to celebrate Hogmanay — Scottish New Year. If you don't know, the Scots don't just celebrate New Year's Eve. They celebrate for four days. Which tells you a great deal about the Scots.
December 29th: The Torch Ceremony
It all started on the evening of the 29th with the torch ceremony.
From an American point of view, handing out 15,000 lit torches to a crowd of people seems like a genuinely horrible idea. A liability nightmare. An insurance adjuster's fever dream.
The Scots lined up, took their torches, and marched through the streets of the Old Town.
Bagpipes. Drum corps. Kilts as far as the eye could see. The whole thing moved through the city like a river of fire and it was completely, unmistakably magnificent.
I think the torch ceremony could only happen in Scotland. Not because of some logistical magic, but because of the people. The Scots are the nicest people I have encountered in all my travels. There's a warmth and a directness to them that makes you feel, almost immediately, like you've known them for years. 15,000 people, open flames, narrow medieval streets — and it worked perfectly. Of course it did.
Day 2: Rosslyn Chapel
We spent the morning walking Edinburgh, taking in the festival atmosphere — the whole city hums during Hogmanay in a way that's hard to describe — then headed out to Rosslyn Chapel.
Whatever you think you know about Rosslyn Chapel from a certain Dan Brown novel, set it aside. The reality is better.
The Chapel was built in 1446. It operated as a Catholic church until the Scottish Reformation in 1571, after which it had a somewhat turbulent few centuries. Oliver Cromwell used it as a stable in the mid-1600s, which I imagine the original builders would have had strong feelings about.
The interior is extraordinary. The walls are covered in carvings — hundreds of them — religious imagery, angels and devils intertwined, symbols layered on top of symbols. You could spend hours in there and still find things you'd missed.
The story I keep coming back to is the legend of the apprentice. As the tale goes, the master carver left for a period and while he was away, one of his apprentices completed a pillar. When the master returned and saw it — saw that it was exceptional, that this young apprentice had produced something he himself could not have equalled — he murdered him.
Out of jealousy. Over a pillar.
The pillar is still there. The Apprentice Pillar. It's beautiful. Whether the story is true or legend hardly matters — it's the kind of story that a place earns over six centuries.
Day 3: Hogmanay — New Year's Eve at The Vaults
New Year's Eve. We took it easy during the day, conserving energy for the night ahead.
The plan: the Scotch Malt Whisky Society tasting room — The Vaults, in Leith. We'd been there before on a previous trip. The usual vibe is relaxed and convivial, the kind of place where serious whisky people talk to each other like old friends. The Hogmanay party was something else entirely.
I wore my family kilt — Maclean of Duart tartan — which felt appropriate. We arrived to a dram of whisky, were shown to our table, and settled in.
The dress code, such as it was, ran the full spectrum. Casual at one end, full Scottish formal at the other — kilt paired with a tuxedo jacket, the whole affair. A band played traditional Scottish music. We ate, we mingled, we had more whisky. It was the kind of evening that starts well and keeps getting better.
Then came the ceilidh.
I have two left feet. I want to be clear about this upfront. I am not a dancer. I know I am not a dancer. Everyone who has ever seen me attempt to dance knows I am not a dancer.
The ceilidh does not care.
The caller teaches the steps before each dance, the band plays, and everyone has a go. It became very clear, very quickly, which people in the room had grown up doing this and which had not. The local Scots moved through the figures like breathing. The rest of us approximated.
One of the other guests — a local woman who had clearly been doing this since she could walk — decided I was a project worth taking on. She was a good teacher. Patient. Persistent. The kind of persistent that does not take two left feet for an answer.
Between dances she told me that every child in Scotland learns the ceilidh dances in primary school. It's just part of growing up there. I found this completely charming, and it explained a great deal about the room.
After the dancing, we reconvened, glasses of champagne appeared, and we counted down to midnight together. The band played. There were more drams. There were toasts. After a dance and a few good whiskies, the whole room had become best friends — with each other, with us, with everyone. That's Hogmanay.
It was the night Jen and I were looking for.
Day 4: New Year's Day — The One That Got Away
We had plans for the Loony Dook.
The Loony Dook is a cold plunge into the Firth of Forth at South Queensferry on New Year's morning. It is exactly what it sounds like. We had decided, at some point in the warm glow of planning this trip, that this was a thing we wanted to do.
Here's what we didn't fully account for: the timing of the Loony Dook depends on the tides. You need the tide coming in, not going out. Nobody wants to wade into the Firth of Forth and get swept toward the North Sea. The year before, the tides had been right at 2pm — a civilised hour for voluntary freezing. This year they were right at 9:30am.
We missed it.
I'll be honest: I'm not entirely sure how devastated I was.
New Year's Day in Edinburgh is called First Steps, and it was a wonderful consolation prize. The whole thing is family-friendly — bands playing across the city in venues that don't usually host live music. Churches. Meeting halls. Each one with a small club atmosphere, multiple acts, the easy flow of going from one to the next. You could spend the whole day just following good music through the city.
We ended the night on the early side with a small plate meal and a couple of drams. The right ending to four days.
The next morning we went to London. That's a story for another post.