Miscellaneous moments

Following are some thoughts I jotted down on my iPhone; they didn’t make it into any other post, so here they are, in no particular order.

• Getting on the elevator the first time I left the hotel and pressing “1” only to stay in the cab when the door opened and press “G” for ground. I knew better, and the “G” button is clearly differentiated from the numbered buttons, but I wasn’t yet in Euromode.

• That same elevator announcing “door opening” and “door closing.” A bit odd when I’m on the landing and the elevator is sitting there empty, about to open, and chirps “door opening” to an empty cab. 

• Jamie’s Italian: Jamie Oliver’s restaurant; incredible polenta chips with garlic mayonnaise and excellent pasta with 10-hour cooked pork. With a Lemonata and tip, under $25!

• Asking the man at ScotRail why there was both a ScotRail ticket office and a Virgin Rail ticket office in Central Station; asking him to repeat the answer; smiling and thanking him, then walking away, still having no idea what he said. Talk about a Scottish Brogue!

• Walking, walking, walking. And then walking some more!

• Looking into a handful of live music venues and not liking what I saw or heard. My hope of hearing some live rock and roll was dashed by the reality of being 63 and defining rock and roll quite differently from how the the local young toughs do. (See yesterday’s post for a different experience).

• Chatting with a ticket agent at a rock club when a 20-something comes in asking to see someone. When asked who she should say is here, he responds, “I’m his wee brother.” (The agent and I kinda melted).

• A 30-something couple in the serve-yourself hotel breakfast room sit down together; she gets up to fill a plate for him, pour his coffee and fetch his juice before serving herself. I assumed they were man and wife, but maybe she was his nanny.

• This from Bread, Bones and Butter: “I have even loved, on a certain level, being the tongue-tied patron in the restaurant who so badly wants to eat what the natives all around me are eating but being too afraid or unwilling to ask.” I’ve been that person, but reading this helped me NOT be that person this time.

• The door code for after-hours entry to the hotel is the one number that virtually any educated person would remember. I should explain: the hotel is on the sixth (top) floor of an office building; once the workers go home 21st century security demands the street door lock. And the code: 1066 of course.

• Overheard in the breakfast room where two couples, just met, were chatting:

“How long were you in India?”
“Oh, only two and-a-half weeks.” 

As a typical American who almost never takes more than seven days, that smarted a wee bit.

• What’s wrong with Scottish plumbing? I saw signs all over that read “Disabled Toilet”

• Finally, a travel memory I will long cherish: I thoroughly enjoyed eating two dinners in the hotel dining room, largely because Margo the cook was highly skilled and also a lovely person with whom I enjoyed talking. Because Bread, Bones and Butter is so much about cooking, I gave it to her when I finished it. She received it with glee. When I returned from my Edinburgh marathon I found her copy of chef Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential with a very sweet inscription to me. That’s such an important part of travel: great interactions with strangers. I will long remember Margo and the rest of the staff at the lovely Hotel Grasshoppers. Be sure to consider them if your travel take you to Glasgow!

My friend Don asked me today what my favorite moment was. I’m going to cheat and respond with two. From the larger perspective it was the dance performance And then one thousand years of peace by Ballet Preljocaj. The dancing was excellent, the tightness of the ensemble amazing, the music varied and compelling – it was a near-perfect performance.

On a smaller scale, as you might guess from above, it was my interaction with Margo. She was such a delight, the food was so good and the reward of coming out of my shell outshone the effort I put into it. Maybe this curmudgeon is learning to loosen up a bit.