On a night in December when the weather outside was frightful, I was delighted to be welcomed to the Scotch Whisky Experience, along with a group of travel bloggers. The team there made us all very welcome, and had a few surprises for us as they prepared for the Year of Food and Drink.
Activities
Inchcolm Island – Cruising the River Forth on the Forth Belle
A fine day for a cruise on the Forth Belle
A trip to Inchcolm Island on the Forth Belle was a return journey we’d been meaning to take for a while, and with our Historic Scotland Membership we added a landing on Inchcolm Island to explore and enjoy the views. Read more
A Visit to the Palace of Holyroodhouse
The residence of the Royal Family in Edinburgh
A visit to the Palace of Holyroodhouse the Royal Family’s official residence in Scotland is one of the highlights of a trip to Edinburgh for many visitors. Read more
The Royal Mile & The Canongate Attractions
We’ve come up with a list of attractions at the foot of the Royal Mile & The Canongate within an easy walking from most hotels, guest houses or self catering based the city centre. Read more
The Girl in the Cafe Visits Edinburgh!
One day when I was searching the internet for photographs of Clarinda’s Tea Rooms in the Royal Mile, Edinburgh to prepare a recommendation of a good place to eat while staying at Craigwell Cottage I found a website called ‘The Girl in the Cafe‘.
On the site I was offered the opportunity to participate in a project of circulating a DVD, watching it and preparing comments. The DVD is of a film which was shown on BBC some time ago, and as soon as I started to watch it, I realised that I had indeed seen it before. I did enjoy viewing it a second time, but share the frustration which was so eloquently expressed by the protagonist Gina (played by Kelly Macdonald) that the G8 summit is held, there is a lot of noise about it in the press at the time, then we don’t hear anything until the next one.
We witnessed the protests at the Edinburgh G8 summit first-hand, indeed one of our friends was wounded in the course of his employment that week. My husband was shut in his office in George Street one evening, with he and his staff afraid to emerge because of hand-to-hand combat going on in Rose Street. We feared for our children’s safety that week as convoys of police cars and other vehicles moved around the city and reports reached us of fighting in the streets and destruction in normally quiet rural areas.
We were all moved when the concerts and marches pledging to ‘Make Poverty History’ pricked our consciences, but then the terrorist acts of 7 July in London grabbed the headlines and we all moved to the next horror on the world stage.
So it’s a good thing that movies like ‘The Girl in the Cafe’ are around to remind us that we are failing to eradicate poverty, but it’s too simplistic to state that it’s only the Third World where people are living in deprived conditions.
As for the love story which is the other theme of the movie, it’s one of Bill Nighy’s better performances – you do actually feel that he’s a sad lonely man with nothing to occupy him except his job. Kelly Macdonald has just the right pitch of mystery and misery to keep you guessing as to why she’s sitting lonely in a cafe too when Bill asks if he might join her. And of course in the end you don’t know if they will ever meet again.
Susan McNaughton
www.sandcastleholidays.co.uk