I often find the similarities between my two cities as charming as the differences. Last weekend, in the process of buying Orla a bike, we encountered a bit of both.

The Bike Station is a business/community organization so innately San Franciscan in character, it’s a little bit shocking to find it hidden among the ancient streets of Edinburgh. Every bicycle merchant may be presumed to want to put more butts on bikes, but these lads actually do something about it. (more…)

Did I imply yesterday that I love the Scottish sky? Fickle lover. Today at lunchtime I stepped across the road to Ratho Station’s small grocery store. With brightly sunlit skies, I thought nothing of heading out without coat, hat or scarf. Five minutes later, I stepped out into a light drizzle. Five paces later, freezing, needle-sharp daggers of hail were cutting into my skin. I returned to the office frostbitten and waterlogged. Five minutes later, the sun is shining, with nary a cloud in sight.

Go ahead Scotland, have your laugh. But this isn’t over. Oh no. Not by a long shot.

The Renroc cafe sits on the corner directly opposite our flat, and Tuesdays are movie night! (more…)

The sky over Edinburgh is constantly interesting, often amazing, and occasionally astounding. This evening, for example, (more…)

Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons, passed away yesterday. (more…)

Saturday we had dinner with our friends David and Karen at their home on the Oxgang Road, out on Edinburgh’s south side. The southern rim of the capital city is neatly proscribed by the M8 motorway: a bulwark against which the tide of Edinburgh’s suburban sprawl crashes and abates. David, Karen and their three children live close enough to this barrier to be considered sentinels, their windows looking out to the grassy hilllands beyond.

Those hills are the Pentlands, Edinburgh’s answer to San Francisco’s Marin headlands: a government maintained green space within easy reach of the city. (more…)

I listen to This American Life a lot. I’m what’s known as a ‘time shifter.’ That is, I subscribe to the podcast and listen to it sometime after the actual broadcast. For me, that usually means on my laptop as I cook or on my iPod on the journey to or from work. (more…)

Two weekends ago we purchased a coney (better known to most of you as a wild rabbit) at the Edinburgh farmer’s market. It’s been cooling its heels in our freezer since then, until this evening. (more…)

Central Edinburgh is laid out and considered along the traverse of busy, touristy Princes Street. North of the street are New Town and Stockbridge, where we made our temporary home last month. To the south lie the Castle, the Old Town, and a long sprawl of neighborhoods and villages all the way up to the Pentland Hills. The neighborhoods along the east and west ends of Princes Street, which is less than a mile long, are (quite surprisingly) known as the West End and East End. (more…)

I recently had a go at Edinburgh letting agents for their single-minded adherence to sensible working hours. The practical consequence of all this 9-5 M-F-ishness was that the fellow stepping into his new flat this past Friday evening had never seen it before. Orla had done virtually all the apartment hunting whilst I loitered with the Picsies. (more…)