Travel Blog

The Tartan Army occupied Mickey Byrne’s in Hollywood yesterday afternoon, filling the inside with their navy blue jerseys and crowding the sidewalk outside, where a line stretched in front of a small tent from which a woman in a bikini top and tight shorts dispensed bottles of beer and the occasional bucket of bottles. Her face was painted with the Scottish flag.

I asked two blondes with four tow-headed children if they were Scots from Scotland or Scots from Florida.

“I live in Scotland,” the taller one said, “but I’m originally from Poland.”

“What city?” I asked her.

“Warsaw.”

“What district?”

“Ochota.”

I told her I lived for two years off of Opaczewska Street with my wife Hania.

“My name is Hania,” she said.

I mentioned that I taught English at the English Language College

“My father taught English at the Warsaw School of Economics.”

People started singing, “No Scotland, no party.” I bumped into a man in a kilt who immediately turned around and put his arm around me. Another man in a kilt, with a shirt that read “Tartan Army Copenhagen,” stood at a table drinking beer with friends. “I’ve lived in Denmark for 40 years,” he told me. “I love it. The people, the lifestyle.”

I asked about the weather. “To be honest,” he said, “when winter comes we go to South Africa.”

I asked if he wasn’t uncomfortable in his wool kilt. “It is a bit hot,” he said. “but we get a nice breeze sometimes that cools us underneath.”

The St. Augustine Pipe band, which had come down for the day, took their places next to the tent. And soon the majestic sound of bagpipes drowned out conversations and turned Hollywood Boulevard into The Royal Mile.