Matthew S Allen: Pictures: Scotland 2002
I went to Edinburgh to attend the High Performance Distributed Computing
conference in September of 2002 to present a paper. I went for a week to the
conference, and spent a few days afterwards with my advisor before he and
Chandra headed off for a tour of Northern Europe. I stayed an extra week in
Edinburgh sampling the local whiskey, beer, and music. I didn't take a whole
lot of pictures, and most of them were awful, so here are the ones worth
looking at:
- Rich and Chandra and
I went to the Aberfeldy distillery, which is a few hours drive
northwest of Edinburgh. Aberfeldy is the most prominent single malt scotch in
Dewers scotch whiskey, and both are owned by the same family. As the
distillery's museum tells us, Dewers took off not because of a superior product
or a tremendous amount of pride in their work, but because of advertising. They
supposedly had the first billboard in London.
- We also went to Stirling castle, which you can see
here, here, and here
. This castle was a favorite of Mary, Queen of Scots. She spent most
of her life imprisioned around Scotland and England until her son, King James,
put her to death for being Chatholic and to further his quest to control both
Scotland and England. He united them, and later went on to commission the King
James Bible. What a good Christian soul. Oh, here is me looking
inspired.
- One final stop in the deliciously green and
historic Saint Andrews golf course before heading
back to the city. As any of you golf buffs will know, this is the oldest golf
course in the world. Scotand's weather is terrible,
but all the moisture in the air makes for beautiful grass.
- My last set of photographs are of Edinburgh castle in the heart of the
city. You can't see the urban environment that surrounds it, but still it looks
pretty damn impressive here,
here, and here. From
the inside it is a city unto itself, which is documented
here, here, and
here.
