Edinburgh is a mad god's dream...

The quote in the title is by Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid, and I found it in a book I'm reading called Edinburgh: Cities of the Imagination. It was written by the Edinburgh playwright Donald Campbell and is sort of a combination between a travel book and a literary and historical overview of the city. I've been reading it in fits and starts, trading off with reading the books I'm assigned to read for my courses.

It's a really interesting approach to giving an overview of a city for travelers, in a format very different from the usual tourist manuals (a chapter full of hotel listings, a chapter full of restaurant listings, a chapter full of local attractions, etc.). Since I'm going to be living there for an entire month, and since I have a pretty specific set of educational and research goals, a standard tourist book is not as useful as something like this. I don't care about how many stars a given hotel or restaurant has been awarded. I'm living in a rented room and cooking most of my meals.

Speaking of such things, I added some links to the sidebar, Including a couple of the places where the program will be hosting public readings–meaning, I'll be reading in at least one of those places–and a site with a panoramic view feature of the place I'll be staying, Wright's House. They are grad student housing for Edinburgh Napier University, private bedrooms with a shared kitchen/bath among two or three other folks.

I decided to collect in this post some of the links to places I've been reading about in Campbell's book which sound interesting. With respect to my last post, I sent out inquiry e-mails to the milliners, costume directors, and academic program heads of the places I linked in it; I've heard back already from one of the faculty at Queen Margaret's University, so I've already made at least one exciting professional connection! I hope to hear from a few more, but even if QMU are the only people to respond, it will be exciting to see and talk with another department with a similar focus to ours at UNC-Chapel Hill!

ETA: The milliners at Fabhatrix have now also gotten back to me, so that's two!

But anyhow, here are the links:

Being as I am a huge fan of maritime history (and fiction, and artwork, etc.), I think while I am there I'd like to visit the Nelson Monument.

I'm also a huge fan of portraiture, so I'm looking forward to the opportunity to check out the new portrait galleries at the National Galleries.

The Oxford Bar is a legendary literary pub, though I guess now it is also prominently featured in some series of popular detective novels? Regardless, I think I would like to check it out.

It would involve negotiating travel down to Dumfries, but perhaps I will be able to check out the National Museum of Costume. Charles Stewart's costume collections are legendary, and the opportunity to see pieces up close and in person is incredible. But, I don't know how difficult it will be to travel down there from Edinburgh, so we will see whether it's possible or not. Even if not, the plain old National Museum in Edinburgh has a lot of interesting collections as well.