Stockbridge

It's like Hobbiton, but filled with Scots!

If you wander out of our apartment, take a right, 1/3 of the way around Moray Place, there's a semi-hidden street named Doune Terrace, a back way slinking out of Moray Feu (the neighborhood we're in). On one side are Georgian houses, the norm in New Town Edinburgh. On the other side is a cliff.

There are a lot of cliffs in Edinburgh. You have to watch where you walk or you'll fall off or bump into one. Some of them rise in front of you unexpectedly, looking a little like San Francisco, but a stone buildings instead of wood.

On Saturday the wind from Storm Kathleen blew us down the sidewalk, threatening to push us over the cliff side. But it was sunny here. Go figure. Storm Kathleen battered the other side of Scotland pretty well that day, causing some flooding and tearing off power lines. In Edinburgh, there was just the wind.

Gloucester Lane cuts across Doune Terrace, then plunges down into that idyllic little bubble of a village ...

Stockbridge. Ah Stockbridge.

Stockbridge is, in some respects, your typical post-millenium gentrified urban neighborhood. By that I mean it has a Starbucks.

But no one is sitting at Starbucks. They are all over at Caffee Nero, drinking espressos out of little tiny paper containers. I think there are tourists in the mix - I hear conversations that sound more like planning than catching-up. But these are tourists who drawn to places where the locals gather, watching and doing their best to fit in. A little like Amy and me, I guess.

Crossing the Dean Bridge, you can take a narrow staircase down to the Water of Leith Walkway. This walkway is 12 miles long, and goes all the way from the West End neighborhood, up to the Frith of Forth. It snakes past the Royal Botanic Gardens, the Edinburgh Sports Club, and at the end, the Royal Yacht Britannia. Yup, you know, that yacht in The Crown that the Queen Elizabeth the Second spends an entire episode giving up?

But anyway, Amy and I are nowhere near that end of the Water of Leith walkway. We are here in the Stockbridge section, gawking at the 1800's architecture rising above this secluded, sunken rushing stream. There are 10 zillion dogs out dragging their owners. They are used to gawking tourists, and are very adept at zig-zagging around without getting tangled up.

Amy's ankle is hurting, so we cut our walk short ... but we're already making plans to walk the entire length of this path someday. I'm still getting used to this way of thinking. In a place that feels unfamiliar, it's a knee jerk response to think "We'll have to do this next time we come out to Edinburgh." But next time could be like next week, or maybe next month. We'll still be here. It feels deeply, sinfully, impossibly luxurious.

And there is the Stockbridge library. It is triangle shaped like the Flatiron Building, but only one story tall. We walk inside and there are a few people sitting at cubicles or lounging in chairs. There is no front desk, but a few librarians are spread out, each at their own private desk.

"I'm going to get a library card," said Amy.

"No way, it'll never happen," I said.

Ignoring me, she heads over to the librarian who just returned from her tea break. "Do you have proof of address?" she asked.

"Uh, we have an AirBnb," said Amy. I pull up the listing on my phone and show it to her.

"OK!" she says, pulling out a brand new library card for Amy. "Does your husband want one too?"

So I'm floored. But I'm from the generation where libraries were a highly-controlled resource. It was a time people fought over books, got on waitlists, stood in line to get checked out. There weren't a lot of non-book media. Maybe some LP's. You could get films (like real films) but you only got them for one night and there were only two projectors to check out with it. There was demand.

Yeah I know. It's post-millenium, and libraries are now fighting for customers. They'll give a card to any old schmuck, including us American schmucks, to get their numbers up. Our home library back in Ithaca resorts to the same brutal marketing tactics, tempting us away from Kindles and Netflix with fineless checkouts, infinite expiration dates, and lavish Blu-Ray box sets.

It's sad, but I think the free, public library is an exemplary idea, one that shouldn't die on the vine. The library brings us together as a community, it cuts through class differences and creates opportunity. It's sustainable, and slows deforestation, leaving the dead trees to come crashing through our dining room - where they belong! And hell, a library is a mighty nice place to spend a Saturday afternoon. Americans may not have invented the public library, but they made it popular and showed Europe the way to do it on a truly broad scale.

You're damn right I want a library card! I think you owe me that much!

OK, so we have our library cards, wandering through Stockbridge with a newfound sense of power.

"We'll never get bored now!" said Amy.

We stop in the Hospicare charity shop. Charity shops in the UK are the equivalent of Goodwill and Salvation Army thrift stores. But here they are tiny and trendy, and it seems like every non-profit is running one. They are full of good stuff - you get the feeling they refuse quite a bit of donations.

We look for a bathrobe. I immediately find one on the rack next to the dress suits. I look at the tag and it's £15 - not too bad. I try it on and it fits like a glove. In the mirror, I resemble Geoffrey Palmer, all ultra-British-sophisticated. All I need is a pipe ... and that would get me kicked out of our AirBnB, so can't go that far. Still, I look damn good.

Next it's down to I.J. Mellis, Cheesemonger. It smells like feet. Parma hams dangle from the ceiling.

"You call yourself a cheese shop?" says Amy to the Retail Assistant. "Heh heh."

The Retail Assistant gives Amy a blank look. OK, in her defense, she looks way too young for Monty Python.

Everything looks damn terrific. I'm just about to spend about £10,000 on parma ham and cheese. Amy, sensing this, whisks me through the crowd of people, saving our nest egg temporarily.

When I have more willpower and a plan, you know I will be back.

The next day is the Stockbridge Farmers Market. The market itself is small, with about 30 vendors doing the usual mix of fruits and veg and cookies and soap and stuff.

Ah ... but then there's paella. Let's talk paella.

Paella is a Spanish rice dish with a long, pedigreed history. Good authentic paella has seafood, a generous pinch of saffron, and socarrat - the crispy layer of almost-burned rice that sticks on the bottom of the paella pan. The socarrat looks like a mistake and takes like heaven. Are you one of those people that picks the crispy bits out of a roast or a pan of caramelized vegetables? You will love socarrat.

Anyway, what gives this this paella a Scottish flair are Langoustines:

They look like lobsters, right? They are sometimes called Norweigan Lobster, and they're very small (the one above is on the largish side). The taste is a little briny, and a little like prawn.

Amy and I stand in a line 20 people deep going around the corner. They are cooking it in huge paella pans, maybe 7 feet across, and are plopping it into takewaway containers as fast as they can. We grab a paella takeaway for £11 apiece, which is absolutely dirt cheap for a meal this caliber. They stick a lemon and a dab of garlic aioli on top. Like all good seafood meals, you have to work a little bit, disassembling the langoustines and mussels and a few bits of ... I think that's octopus ... and so on.

But oh man. What a meal that is. It is deep and fresh and every taste you would want. With a pile of shells on the table, we recover to the couches and read for the rest of the afternoon.

I kind of like Stockbridge.