A space for reflection
On Victoria Street, I watched people line up to photograph themselves in front of a location widely promoted as the inspiration for Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter novels. What fascinated me was that J.K. Rowling has publicly denied the connection. Nobody in the queue seemed particularly concerned. The goal wasn’t to verify the story. It was to participate in it.
That tension—between the Edinburgh that actually exists and the one people come to find—followed me through the entire city.
I had flown from Washington Dulles through Iceland, and by the time I reached Glasgow I wasn’t hungry so much as determined — determined to stay awake until a reasonable bedtime and reset my clock. Late afternoon I finally hit a wall, and hunger arrived all at once.
Most restaurants were nearly empty. Then I passed one that wasn’t.
I hadn’t come to Scotland for Italian food. But an empty dining room and a full one are telling you something, and I’ve learned to listen. I walked into Sugo.
The crowd was young and energetic — my sense was students on a budget who had found their place. Sugo’s promise is simple: fresh pasta made by hand, every day. The open kitchen was in almost constant motion, and you can see why — at that pace they more or less have to keep making it continuously. You order and the food arrives within minutes. What’s remarkable is that none of it feels rushed. The service is warm and genuinely friendly, as if speed and hospitality are simply not in conflict here.
The menu is short and regional — dishes from specific parts of Italy rather than a generic greatest hits list. I ordered the pappardelle with slow-cooked Tuscan beef ragù and a fresh mixed salad. The pasta was exactly what it should be. The salad was generous and tasted like it had been assembled that morning.
The prices are reasonable. It was the best meal of my trip, and I would return in a heartbeat.
When I arrived in Inverness, I didn’t fully appreciate how far north I had come. The city sits at roughly the same latitude as Sitka, Alaska. Up here, the weather doesn’t simply change—it can shift with astonishing speed. One local told me that four seasons often pass in the span of ten minutes.
I learned that firsthand on a gray, sodden day. Wanting to visit Inverness Castle, I finished my lunch and hoped the downpour would ease. It didn’t. Eventually I pulled up my collar and headed out into the rain anyway.
The first thing I saw from my hotel room was a bridge.
St Andrew’s Suspension Bridge spanned the River Clyde just outside my window, its wrought-iron frame catching the afternoon light in a way that stopped me mid-unpack. Built between 1853 and 1855 by engineer Neil Robson, it was not designed to be beautiful. It replaced a busy ferry crossing and carried workers from Bridgeton and Calton to the factories of Hutchesontown. Pure industrial necessity. And yet there it was — genuinely elegant.
That combination — beauty that was never trying to impress anyone — turned out to be Glasgow in miniature.
Stella Tennant, a gorgeous iconic model and fashion designer, died in Scotland on December 22, 2020. She was 50 years old.
Culture and style critic Guy Trebay, writing for The New York Times, explains that Tennant had deep aristocratic roots but “wore her rarefied heritage lightly throughout her three-decade run in fashion.”
She was photographed by top photographers including Steven Meisel and Bruce Weber.
A sad end of an era, way too soon.