My Scottish Hood is A Lot Like My Old American Hood

Before I married Sr. Matteo in March, I lived in a city just outside of Atlanta called Decatur (longtime readers, you know we are proud Decaturites). Cath and I fell in love with Decatur about ten years ago when we moved from D.C. to the fair city to go to college. Decatur is a small town, next to a big city (just six miles east from the heart of Atlanta): wonderful restaurants (just read this!), great boutiques, galleries and green space.

Well, 10 years after moving to Decatur, I moved to the Scottish Decatur, better known as Edinburgh. There are some major differences. Edinburgh is bigger both in size and population, it is quite a bit older, hillier, colder, windier, rainier, and better for a Romantic (capital “r”) state-of-mind.

So the cities aren’t identical, but here is what they have in common: wonderfully friendly people and a small town feel. I haven’t met very many people here because I work from home, but somehow when I go out, I bump into one of the five people I’ve met. There are great restaurants and independent boutiques, and very little pretention and pockets of diversity.

Now that we’ve started to feel a little less frantic (find an apartment! open a bank account! get some internets!), Matteo and I are trying to get to know our neighborhood better. We’ve found a couple of really terrific bakeries (that’s Dough Re Mi below).

Look at that French bread deliciousness below: that folded over bit of bread is like Moroccan focaccia called harissa (spicy and delicious), there’s the most buttery pain au chocolats and croissants (we bought the lot after a morning jog — in my opinion, the only reason to do something so masochistic is for butter and chocolate).

Another local bakery around the block makes this delicious jam: it has tart cranberries and sweet strawberries, made for sinking into buttery crumpet holes.

Here is a photo of what I look like before I gain 200 pounds (i.e. 14 stone) from eating butter in its different delightful forms:

Apparently, we prefer to mainly explore our new city gastronomically. We figured it is up to us to try every single café and restaurant around our flat, you know, for our guests that are coming to visit. Such a terrific sacrifice on our part of course.

Here is some Edinburgh “Crombie” (sausage) and tatties (potatoes) at Café Grande and below is our berry crumble (and cream!) for dessert.

Thanks for following along with all this day-to-day stuff! Probably from the pics it looks like we just get to skip around a beautiful city and stuff ourselves with croissants. AsianCajuns lets me stay in touch with Kitcath (and you guys) and remember why I moved across the ocean and have to make a fresh start in a new place. It’s a lovely, magically place and one of my favorite cities in the whole world, but it has been a bewildering and a little lonely and stressful at times.

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Dear Kitcath,

Like I was telling you, I started reading Her Fearful Symmetry. It’s weird to read a book about twins (I don’t think I have – except for that one Sweet Valley High). Niffenegger makes us/twins sound a little creepy. Are we creepy? I mean we aren’t pale and white/blond-haired like these mirror twin girls, but she says they made people uneasy when they saw the twins together. I know we freak people out when we say the same thing at the same time.

I want you to read this and the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peal Pie Society when you get here. Or buy one of them for the flight over.

Good luck on your paper, Kitcath! Wish I could help you write it!

xoxoxo,

Larbar

p.s. Do you think we could make Edinburgh and Decatur unofficial (twin) sister cities?!

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Edit: Oct. 31 • 6:20 pm BST
Fellow Decaturite Lain S. points out that Decatur and Edinburgh also have another wonderful thing in common: Book Festivals. Lucky for us, they fall one right after each other in August (Edinburgh International Book Festival) and then September (AJC Decatur Book Festival). No excuse not to go to both, right?