Last night, we made our first trek out to a real club. Up until now, we had been frequenting pubs and smaller hang-out type of bars. One of the neatest ones is called Brass Monkey, a Bo-Ho bar off the main drag (and across the street from where my family will be staying for Christmas). It has a very hippy, kind of beet, false-intellectual kind of feel to it, but it's got a giant bed in the back to lounge on. You have to climb up onto it (with your drink balanced precariously in one hand and a purse in the other), but once you're on, they have nicely placed small, carved wooden tables up there with small cup holders for your drinks. No more spillage. Very creative and useful, I think. The entire room with the bed in it (I know you're thinking something small, but the bed itself is the size of a decent dance floor) is covered with vintage movie posters, and the giant screen on one wall plays vintage/foreign/artsy movies all day. So kinda cool, if you don't mind faux intellectuals. The second bar we've come to love is called the Grassmarket, conveniently located (if it suprises you) in the Grassmarket area of town, where we stayed when we first arrived. The bar is more of a local place, with a couple of unemployed guys drinking their woes away. But the bartender knows Jonmikel now, and the food is decent, and they offer students discounts. Actually, the food is good, with the best bangers and mash I've found so far in town. Not the cheapest, but the best value, for sure. And they have wireless internet, which is how we found it in the first place.

Also, we found a place with pool tables. Who knew they had pool tables in Scotland? It's a little Aussie bar, where the bartender has some kind of obsession with the Simpsons and was ubr impressed when I knew how to use the coin thing on the pool table (something every self-respected American should know). But the whole pool experience is quite different here: the tables are way smaller, as are the balls, and there are no numbers or stripes and solids; it's just red or yellow. It took us a while to get used to the lighter balls; in fact, we still struggle with it: when Jonmmikel goes to make a shot, he hits it so hard, I'm surprised it doesn't shatter. But it is still pool, so we play.

Oh yeah, back to the whole club thing. We went out to a place right around the Uni called The Jazz Bar. They showcase at least 2 jazz-ish bands a night, though genre's are often traversed to include jazzy-rock, jazzy-hiphop, and (as was the case last night) jazzy-Latin. We went specifically to go see Alba Flamenco, a troup that does flamenco singing, dancing and clapping, and all that goes with it. It was Jonmikel's first time seeing flamenco, and it was impressed at how "energetic" it was (his exactly wording). I think he was thinking something way more mellow. But Latin music is never mellow, always passionate and sexy. That's why I like it, I think. The troup was very good, though I think their entourage forgot that this was a college area, and so things aren't going to be as classy as they would be at a larger, more expensive venue. They kept yelling at everybody, even the poor guy who's job it was to pick up the empty glasses. But it was a lot of fun, and the bar turned out to be this wonderfully stereotypical jezz cellar, dark with lots of deep red highlights, a piano, brick walls, intimate tables (that weren't so intimate last night, as the place should have been standing room only). I can see Audrey Hepburn in her skinny jeans hanging out at this place. I hope we can return to see some more jazz, perhaps some nice crooners or something.