Haggis

I don't have any photos of haggis, but it's just as well, as it's not the most attractive subject. (Traditionally it's boiled in a sheep's stomach, and if you think back to occasions when you've had the opportunity to see the contents of your own or someone else's stomach, you'll probably decide that the lack of a photo is just as well. Google it if you're really curious.)

I was determined to try it, just so I could say I had, but it's surprisingly delicious. Surprisingly because it's made of sheep entrails mixed with oatmeal and boiled in a casing and looks like something you'd cross the street to avoid, but it's savory and nutty and chewy, something like a very thick sausage soup.

It's a better accompaniment to scrambled eggs at breakfast than the limp bacon and bready sausages of the British Isles, lovely with the traditional tomatoes and mushrooms and probably even with the baked beans, if you're British enough to be able to face baked beans in the morning.

Obligatory castle photos

So yes, there is this amazing castle looming over the park -- looming over everything in the city. Basically there was a large extinct volcano available, and it was inevitable that something fortress-like would be built at the top.

And though my hotel made a point of letting me know I was getting a room with a view of the castle, there can't be many places in Edinburgh where you can't see it. (Snark aside, the Blackberry photo of the castle at night from my hotel room does not do it justice.)

Sunday bird blogging

Edinburgh edition.

A magpie in Princes Street Gardens. Not a great shot, but the best I could do, half-blinded by all the white flesh around me. Magpies are common in the British Isles, but I'd never seen one, and the fun of discovery made up for the obnoxiousness of the species (closely related to crows.)

Edinburgh

You were expecting maybe a castle?

I spent my first afternoon in the city watching something a little more exotic, something your average visitor to Edinburgh never gets to see: Scots sunbathing.

After tramping up and down Princes Street looking for a hotel that stubbornly refused to be where the map in my hand indicated, and the elusive hotel's refusal to make it up to me by allowing me to check in early, I had plenty of time to sit in the Princes Street Gardens watching the natives enjoy the unusually hot sunny weather.

The kids were having fun. The ice cream stands were doing great business. But most of the adults looked a little dazed, as if they didn't quite know what to make of it all.

Saturday geometries

Flying to Edinburgh tonight, so here's the last New York picture for a while -- scaffolding at the Sheraton on Seventh Avenue.

Sunday bird blogging

I'm off to Scotland Saturday, so until I have some real traveling pictures, here's a very New York bird entry: a house sparrow serenading the rush hour traffic on Eighth Avenue.

Saturday reflections

A building on 52nd Street, shot from the Equitable Tower atrium.

I like the way the dark framing gives the illusion that you're looking through, rather than at, the windows, to some strange, wavy, zigzaggy imaginary city.

Or possibly Barcelona.

Sunday bird blogging

Cardinals are always hard to miss, even in the thick greens of summer.

Sumer is icumen in

Hazy, hot and humid, so here's a flashback to last summer in Sweden, and  a photo of a boathouse in Klädesholmen.

Cool, clean, stark -- everything that New York in summer is not.

Welcome to the working week

Outdoor market in Trogir, Croatia.

Sunday bird blogging

A blue jay. From the foreshortened angle in the photo above you can't see the tail at all, and it barely looks like a bird.

But here's another picture of the same bird with his ass hanging out of a tree. Definitely a blue jay.

Welcome to the working week

It's my birthday, so welcome to my working week: still life with BlackBerry.