Raisin Weekend/ William Wallace

This weekend is what is called Raisin weekend.  It consists of undergrads getting drunk drunk drunk and then on Monday there is a "foam party."  They spray each other with shaving cream while wearing costumes.

Postgrads get in on it too, but I'm not super interested in having an "academic family."  Students get a mom and dad, which makes sense if you are an undergrad.  Kinda a built in buddy system to hang out with.  (I want to pause and say my computer thinks mom is spelt wrong because it wants me to type mum. Ha.) What I am interested in is watching the foam fight.  I am sure it will be funny.

Our new lab mate, Ana, is finally coming on Monday.  She is going to stay with me until  maybe January.  While I am not a huge fan of roommates, I am excited to meet her and have her here.

I never posted about the William Wallace monument.  It is just across the way from Stirling Castle. You have to hike up a STEEP hill.  Once up there, an actor told us the real story of William Wallace.  At the time I could  not pick apart the difference from the stupid Mel Gibson movie, Braveheart.  However, I have since watched a good portion of the movie and its very different.  It was very cool to be standing on top of the hill where the monument is and have the actor point to the river valley where the battle occurred.  And then look the other way and imagine an army of Scots coming down the hills.  Inside the monument you have to walk up 246 steps. 246 exactly.  The stairwell in skinny and steep.  I did get nervous on the way up.  Even though there is only small slits in the walls to see out of, I could feel just how high we were getting, and I got scared.

There are three rooms along the way to the top.  One room contained Wallace's real sword. Now that is just crazy.  His ACTUAL sword.

 

Here are some views from the top.  It was a rare blue skied day.

I am a sucker for castles

Yesterday, my friend Richard and I took a little road trip to Stirling. Stirling is about an hour and a half drive from us.  I will say this until I loose breath: "Scotland is indescribably beautiful."  Not turquoise ocean water, white sands beautiful; not snow covered mountains beautiful (yet); not twinkly lights of a city beautiful.  Scotland has its own beauty.  Its not quite as green as Ireland, but the rolling hills in our area of Scotland are really breathtaking.  I described the landscape to Richard as looking the way Earth does as you fly away from it on a plane.  Things become geometrical, green and brown squares.  Only we aren't flying away from it, its simply in the distance.  I do not know if that makes sense but it does to us.


Our first stop was Stirling castle.  A little background of it can been seen here: timeline of the castle.  Basically its been around since the 1100's.


The castle's royal coat of arms has a unicorn on it. A freaking unicorn! It was like Richard's dream come true. Ha.  Apparently the unicorn used to be seen as powerful and pure, so King James V,  I think, adopted it.  They were everywhere! They were on huge wall covering tapestries, carved on top of the roof, with golf plated horns and crowns.  On the ceilings, over fireplaces.  It was hard to imagine what King James was thinking, because unicorns (in my life) are seen as something that would live amongst fairies.  Not that I think about that often or anything....

The castle was fun though.  I love this kind of stuff.  Knowing that people, important people, famous people have lived inside those walls.  Even though I constantly had to remind Richard to stop touching stuff that other tourists have touched a zillion times, like a dirty laminated "recipe book," I like to touch the actual old stuff.  I kept telling him to touch this wall or that wall.  I like knowing that someone 800 years ago may have touched that spot too.

Entrance / "Forework"

The yellowish building is the palace, where the royalty slept

There was a garden when you first walked into the castle walls, "the forework." We climbed up some stairs to where you could see the entire garden and out across the town.  All I could think was, "I wonder if Mary enjoyed this view often."

Here are some interested smalls facts about the castle:

1. Stirling castle "changed hands 8 times between 1296 and 1342.  This is called the Wars of Independence.

2. A murder took place at Stirling Castle. In February 1452. William, 8th Earl of Douglas was assassinated at Stirling Castle by James II and his courtiers. Legend says that he was stabbed 26 times. His corpse is said to have been thrown from a window down into the area now known as the Douglas Gardens. (We stood where his body supposedly landed. Weird, creepy, cool history.

3. This one is my favorite. Scotland’s first recorded attempt at flight took place at Stirling Castle in September 1507. John Damian, an Italian alchemist at the court of James IV, attempted to fly from the castle’s walls with the aid of feathered wings. He failed completely, landing in a dunghill and breaking his thigh bone.

He jumped from right where I stood to take this picture.

I don't understand how he didn't break more bones, or die.  Perhaps his wings slightly worked.

4. Mary, Queen of Scots was crowned at the castle in September 1543.  She was only 9 months old, and cried during the entire ceremony.  Ugh kids, am I right?

5. A lion was kept at Stirling castle by James V.  His palace was built around n open rectangular courtyard, known as the lion's den.  (In the picture above of the palace, you can see the courtyard.)  James owned at least one lion, which is the symbol for Scottish kings.  Its thought that the "lion's den" is where he kept it.\

6. The world's oldest known football/soccer ball was found at Stirling Castle. It was lodged in the rafters of the palace. Its origins are placed around 1540 and it was made from a pig's bladder and a leather skin.

We also went to the William Wallace monument.  I have to run to my office, but I will post about that when I get home tonight!