| Home > Scotland > Aberdeen Information |
| Aberdeen Information |
| The third-largest city in Scotland, ABERDEEN
, commonly known as the Granite City, lies 120 miles northeast of Edinburgh,
on the banks of the rivers Dee and Don smack in the middle of the northeast
coast. Based around a working harbour, it's a place that people either
love or hate. Certainly, while some extol the many tones and colours of
Aberdeen's granite buildings, others see only uniform grey and find the
city grim, cold and unwelcoming. The weather doesn't help: Aberdeen lies
on a latitude north of Moscow and the cutting wind and driving rain (even
if it does transform the buildings into sparkling silver) can be tiresome. Since the 1970s, oil has made Aberdeen a hugely wealthy and self-confident place: only four percent of Scotland's population live in the city, yet it has eight percent of the country's spending power. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, it can seem a soulless city; there's a feeling of corporate sterility and sometimes, despite its long history, Aberdeen seems to exist only as a departure point and service station for the transient population of some ten to fifteen thousand who live on the 130 oil platforms out to sea. Staying in such a prosperous place has its advantages. There are plenty of good restaurants and hotels, local transport is efficient and certain sights, including Aberdeen's splendid Art Gallery and the excellent Maritime Museum , are free. Furthermore, the fact that the city is the bright light in a wide hinterland helps it to sustain a lively nightlife with some decent pubs and a colourful arts and cultural scene. The City Aberdeen divides neatly into five main areas. The city centre , roughly bounded by Broad Street, Union Street, Schoolhill and Union Terrace, features the opulent Marischal College , the colonnaded Art Gallery with its fine collection, and homes that predate Aberdeen's nineteenth-century town planning and have been preserved as museums . Union Street continues west to the comparatively cosmopolitan West End, where much of the city's decent nightlife can be found amid the tall grey town houses. To the south, the harbour still heaves with boats serving the fishing and oil industries, while north of the centre lies attractive Old Aberdeen , a village neighbourhood presided over by King's College and St Machar's Cathedral and influenced by the large student population. The long sandy beach with its esplanade development, only a mile or so from the heart of the city, marks Aberdeen's eastern border. |
| History |
| In the twelfth century, Alexander I noted
"Aberdon" as one of his principal towns, and by the thirteenth
century it had become a centre for trade and fishing , a jumble of timber
and wattle houses perched on three small hills, with the castle to the
east and St Nicholas's kirk outside the gates to the west. It was here that Robert the Bruce sought refuge during the Scottish Wars of Independence, leading to the garrison of the castle by Edward I and Balliol's supporters. In a night-time raid in 1306, the townspeople attacked the garrison and killed them all, an event commemorated by the city's motto "Bon Accord", the watchword for the night. A century later Bishop Elphinstane founded the Catholic university in the area north of town known today as Old Aberdeen , while the rest of the city developed as a mercantile centre and important port. By the mid-twentieth century, Aberdeen's traditional industries were in decline, but the discovery of oil in the North Sea transformed the place from a depressed port into a boom town. The oil-borne prosperity may have served to mask the thinness of the region's other wealth creators, but it has nonetheless allowed Aberdeen to hold its own as a cultural and academic centre and as a focus of the northeast's identity into the new century. |
| Oil and Aberdeen |
| When oil was discovered in BP's Forties
Field in 1970, Aberdonians rightly viewed it as a massive financial opportunity,
and - despite fierce competition from other east coast British ports,
Scandinavia and Germany - the city succeeded in persuading the oil companies
to base their headquarters here. The city's population swelled by sixty
thousand, and earnings escalated from fifteen percent below the national
average to a figure well above it. At the peak of production in the mid-1980s
, 2.6 million barrels a day were being turned out, and the price had reached
$80 a barrel. The effect of the slump of 1986 - when oil prices dropped
to $10 a barrel - was devastating: jobs vanished at the rate of a thousand
a month, house prices dropped and Aberdeen soon discovered just how dependent
on oil it was. The moment oil prices began to rise, crisis struck again
with the loss of 167 lives when the Piper Alpha oilrig exploded, precipitating
an array of much-needed but very expensive safety measures. Oil remains the cornerstone of Aberdeen's economy, keeping unemployment down to one of the lowest levels in Britain and driving up house prices not just in the city itself but in an increasingly wide area of its rural hinterland. Predictions of the imminent decline in oil reserves and the end of Aberdeen's economic boom are heard frequently, as they have been since 1970, but reliable indicators suggest that the black gold will be flowing well into the new millennium. |
| Arrival Information and City Transport |
| Aberdeen's Dyce airport is seven miles
northwest. The airport bus #27 and Aberdeen-Inverness bus #10 run to the
city centre; a taxi costs around £10. The main train station is on Guild
Street, in the centre (tel 0845/748 4950), with the bus terminal for intercity
and regional services right beside it (regional buses tel 0870/608 2608;
intercity buses tel 0870/550 5050). Ferries run from Jamieson's Quay in
the harbour to Lerwick in Shetland and Stromness in Orkney. Note that
from October 2002, Northlink will be taking over this service from P&O
Scottish Ferries. From the train and bus station it's a two-minute walk up the hill to Union Street, Aberdeen's main thoroughfare, and an even shorter stroll to the tourist office in Old Provost Ross's House, beside the Maritime Museum on Ship Row (July & Aug Mon-Sat 9.30am-7pm, Sun 10am-4pm; June & Sept Mon-Sat 9.30am-5pm; rest of year Mon-Fri 9.30am-5pm, Sat 10am-2pm; tel 01224/288828, ). Almost all local buses (tel 01224/650065) pass along Union Street; buy a Farecard (in £2, £5 or £10 denominations) from the main transport office , 395 King St, or the busy city-centre kiosk outside Marks & Spencer on Union Street, which also hands out transport maps ; each time you travel the fare is deducted from the card. A open-topped bus tour passing the main sights runs regularly (July-Sept) from the Town House on Union Street (£4; or an "explorer" £6 ticket also buys a day's free travel on local buses). |
| Listings |
| Airport tel 01224/722331. Bike rental Alpine Bikes, 66-70 Holburn St tel 01224/211455; Cycling World, 460 George St tel 01224/632994. Bookshops The largest are Waterstone's, 269-271 Union St, and Ottakar's, in Trinity Shopping Centre, Union Bridge. Bon Accord Books, 69-75 Spittal, is the best for second-hand. Bus information Grampian Transport Busline tel 01224/650065. Car rental Arnold Clark, Girdleness Rd (tel 01224/249159), and at the airport (tel 01224/663723); Budget, Wellheads Drive (tel 01224/793333), and at the airport (tel 01224/771777); National, 46 Summer St and at the airport (both tel 0870/400 4502). Exchange Thomas Cook in the Bon Accord Centre (Mon-Sat 9.30am-5.30pm, Sun noon-5pm; tel 01224/807100). Ferry information P&O Scottish Ferries tel 01224/572615, . Internet There's free access in the Reference section of the main library on Rosemount Viaduct (Mon-Thurs 9am-8pm, Fri & Sat 9am-5pm). Costa Coffee on Loch Street, at the back of the Bon Accord Centre, also offers access. Left luggage Small 24hr lockers at the train station cost £2. Medical facilities The Royal Infirmary, on Foresterhill, northeast of the town centre, has a 24hr casualty department (tel 01224/681818). Boots pharmacy is at 161 Union St (Mon-Sat 8am-6pm; tel 01224/211592). Late-night pharmacies are listed each day in the Evening Express. Police Main station is on Queen Street tel 01224/386000. Post office The central post office is in the St Nicholas Centre, between Union Street and Upperkirkgate (Mon-Sat 9am-5.30pm), with a branch at 489 Union St (Mon-Fri 9am-5.30pm, Sat 9am-12.30pm). Taxis Mairs Taxis tel 01224/353535. |
| Eating, Drinking and Nightlife |
| Union Street and the surrounding area
has a glut of attractive cafés and restaurants . Like most ports, Aberdeen
caters for a transient population with a lot of disposable income and
a desire to get drunk as quickly as possible: although you'll find no
shortage of loud, flashy bars catering to such needs, there are still
a number of more traditional old pubs which are well worth a visit. Cafés and Restaurants Ashvale 46 Great Western Rd. One of Scotland's finest, and biggest, fish-and-chip shops, with seating for 300. Restaurant open daily until 11pm; takeaway until 1am. Inexpensive. Howies 50 Chapel St tel 01224/639500. Aberdeen outpost of an Edinburgh institution, serving Modern Scottish cooking in a very accessible environment. Good price set meal deals and cheap house wine. Moderate. Lemon Tree 5 West North St. Easy-going café inside the arts centre; serves good vegetarian and vegan snacks and meals. Inexpensive. Poldino's 7 Little Belmont St tel 01224/647777. Lively, authentic Italian restaurant in a happening area of the city. Moderate. Closed Sun. Silver Darling Pocra Quay, North Pier tel 01224/576229. Attractively located right at the mouth of the Dee in Footdee, this pricey restaurant serves the best seafood in town. Expensive. Closed Sat lunch & Sun. Soul & Spice 15-17 Belmont St tel 01224/645200. Entertaining and colourful café serving up fantastic African and Caribbean dishes. Moderate. Open evenings only Tues-Fri, all day Sat & Sun. Wild Boar 19 Belmont St tel 01224/625357. Upbeat gallery/coffee shop/brasserie with well-priced vegetarian food, soups, salads and oriental-style noodles, as well as great cake and coffee through the day. Food served until 9pm (Fri & Sat 8pm), after which DJs move in. Moderate. Pubs and Bars Archibald Simpson 5 Castle St. A J.D. Wetherspoon chain-pub on the corner of Union Street, named after one of the architects of the Granite City, in typically ornate style with tiled floors and an extravagant interior. Ma Cameron's Inn Little Belmont Street. Aberdeen's oldest pub, though only a section remains of the original. Serves food. Prince of Wales 7 St Nicholas Lane. The quintessential Aberdeen pub with a long bar and flagstone floor. Serves fine pub grub, is renowned for its real ales and has a Sunday evening folk session; little wonder that it's often crowded. RSVP Academy Shopping Centre, Schoolhill tel 01224/625590. Stylish and busy venue with designer furniture and live jazz on a Sunday afternoon. St Machar Bar 97 High St, Old Aberdeen. The medieval quarter's only pub, a pokey, old-fashioned bar inevitably full of King's College students. Clubs and Live Music The Blue Lamp 121 Gallowgate. A big bar featuring live bands (Fri & Sat) and a folk session (Mon); there's also a much smaller snug for relative peace and quiet. The Globe Inn 13-15 North Silver St. Pleasant city-centre inn with jazz and blues on Tues, Fri, Sat & Sun. Franklyn's 44 Justice Mill Lane. Contains three very different rooms: a piano bar; a club bar with live bands (Fri & Sat); and crowd-pleasing chart music pumping out in the main dance area. Lemon Tree 5 West North St. The fulcrum of the city's arts scene, with a great buzz and regular live music, comedy and folk. Theatres and Cinemas Belmont Picture House 9 Belmont St tel 01224/343536, . Art-house cinema showing the more cultured new releases and a back-list of classic, cult and foreign-language films. There's a decent café inside and some good places nearby for a bite before or after. His Majesty's Rosemount Viaduct tel 01224/637788. Aberdeen's main theatre, in a beautifully restored Edwardian building, with a programme that ranges from highbrow drama and opera to pantomime. Lemon Tree 5 West North St tel 01224/642230, . Avant-garde events with off-the-wall comedians and plays, many coming hotfoot from the Edinburgh festivals. UGC Beach Esplanade tel 0870/155 0502. Huge multiplex cinema in a beach-side development showing all the mainstream releases. |
| Explore Aberdeen |
| Beach Aberdeen can surely claim to have the best beach of all Britain's large cities. Less than a mile east of Union Street is a great two-mile sweep of clean sand, broken by groynes and lined all along with an esplanade, where most of the city's population seems to gather on a sunny day. Towards the southern end of the beach is a burgeoning concrete expanse of cinemas and fast-food outlets, a couple of fairly tatty amusement parks and a vast leisure centre. As you head further north, most of the beach's hinterland is devoted to successive golf links. Bus #14 goes along the southern esplanade. A few hundred yards inland, the city's old tram depot at 179 Constitution Street, just across from the Patio Hotel , houses Satrosphere (Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1.30-5pm; ; £5), Aberdeen's thoroughly entertaining hands-on science exhibition. City Centre The centre of Aberdeen is dominated by mile-long Union Street , whose impressive architecture, sometimes lost among the shoppers and chain stores, is still the grandest and most ambitious single thoroughfare in Scotland. The key to the early nineteenth-century city planners who conceived the street was the building of the ambitious Union Street bridge , spanning two hills and the Denburn gorge. The first attempt, a triple-span design by Glasgow architect David Hamilton, bankrupted the city and collapsed during construction. The famous Thomas Telford, called in as an adviser, proposed a single-arch structure which, when completed, became one of the engineering wonders of its age. Aberdeen Art Gallery Aberdeen's engrossing Art Gallery (Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 2-5pm; free) was purpose-built in 1884 to a Neoclassical design by Mackenzie. You enter via the airy Centre Court , dominated by Barbara Hepworth's central fountain and the thick pillars running down from the upper balcony, each hewn from a different local marble. The walls here highlight the gallery's policy of acquiring contemporary art, with British work to the fore. From here, the Side Court contains selected work by YBAs (Young British Artists) gifted by the Saatchi Collection in 2000, including Jordan Baseman's extraordinary I Love You Still , made from tree limbs and human hair. The upstairs rooms house the main body of the gallery's painting collection. The permanent collection is moved around on an occasional basis, and some of the rooms are given over to temporary and touring exhibitions: you'll find these advertised downstairs as well as in the local press. Starting at the top of the staircase, the sheer number of landscapes crowding the walls of Room One can be disconcerting at first, but closer inspection reveals a superb collection of Victorian narrative art. Room Two concentrates on eighteenth-century painters such as Scotland's famous portraitists, Henry Raeburn and Alan Ramsay. Room Three includes works by Boudin, Courbet, Sisley, Monet, Pissarro and a deliciously bright Renoir, La Roche Guyon . The strong connections between the French schools and the development of modernism in Scottish painting saw the emergence of the "Glasgow Boys" in the 1880s, exemplified here by John Lavery's The Tennis Party . Inheritors of the Glasgow Boys' mantle, the now much in-vogue Scottish Colourists, can be found in Room Four . Here, Peploe's Landscape, Cassis shows off his instinct for colour, with daringly angled foreground tree trunks in rich blue, chocolate and purple shadows. In Room Six and on the balcony overlooking the Central Court you'll find some superb works by British Impressionists and Modernists. Castlegate and Around Any exploration of the city centre should begin at the open, cobbled Castlegate , where Aberdeen's long-gone castle once stood. At its centre is the late seventeenth-century Mercat Cross , carved with a unique gallery of Stewart sovereigns alongside some fierce gargoyles. Castlegate was once the focus of city life but nowadays is rather lifeless, with litter swirling around and pigeons easily outnumbering shoppers. However, the view up gently rising Union Street - a jumble of grey spires, turrets and jostling double-decker buses - is quintessential Aberdeen and well worth taking a moment or two to savour. As Union Street begins you have to crane your neck to get a good view of the towering, turreted spire of the granite Town House , though the steely-grey nineteenth-century exterior is in fact simply a facade behind which lurks the early seventeenth-century Tolbooth , one of the city's oldest buildings. Used as a jail for many centuries, the Tolbooth presently houses a mothballed museum on the theme of crime and imprisonment. Nearby, on King Street, the sandstone St Andrew's Episcopal Cathedral (mid-May to mid-Sept Mon-Sat 11am-4pm), where Samuel Seabury, America's first bishop, was ordained in 1784, offers a welcome relief from the uniform granite. Inside, its spartan whiteness is broken by florid gold ceiling bosses representing the (then) 48 states of the USA and 48 local families who remained loyal to the Episcopal Church during the eighteenth-century Penal Laws. Marischal College On Broad Street itself stands Aberdeen's most imposing edifice and the world's second-largest granite building after the Escorial in Madrid - the exuberant Marischal College , whose tall, steely-grey pinnacled neo-Gothic facade is in absolute contrast to the hideously utilitarian concrete office blocks which face it. This spectacular architecture with all its soaring, surging lines has been painted and sketched more than any other in Aberdeen. The college itself was founded in 1593 by the fourth Earl Marischal, and coexisted as a separate Protestant university from Catholic King's, just up the road, for over two centuries. It was long Aberdeen's boast that their city had as many universities as the whole of England, and it wasn't until 1860 that the two were united as the University of Aberdeen. The Marischal Museum (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm, Sun 2-5pm; free), is made up of two large rooms that contain a wealth of weird exhibits, many gathered by Victorian anthropologists and other collectors who roamed the world filling their luggage with objects. The museum, sensitive to the cultural crassness this represents to the modern world, concentrates as much on the phenomenon of these collectors as the objects they brought back. Aberdeen's oldest-surviving private house, Provost Skene's House , dating from 1545, is hemmed in by ghastly modern office blocks at 45 Guestrow (Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1-4pm; free). In the sixteenth century all the well-to-do houses in the area looked like this, with mellow stone and rounded turrets - yet it was only the intervention of the Queen Mother in 1938 which saved this house from the fate of its neighbours. The house is now a museum, with a costume gallery, archeological exhibits and a series of period room settings illustrating life in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Between Upperkirkgate and Union Street stands the long St Nicholas Kirk (May-Sept Mon-Fri noon-4pm, Sat 1-3pm, Oct-April Mon-Fri 10am-1pm; free), actually two churches in one, with a solid, central bell tower rising from the middle, from where the 48-bell carillon, the largest in Britain, regularly chimes across the city. The Renaissance-style West Church , formerly the nave of St Nicholas, was designed in the mid-eighteenth century by James Gibbs, architect of St-Martin-in-the-Fields in London. The East Church was rebuilt over the groin-vaulted crypt of the restored fifteenth-century St Mary's Chapel (entered from Correction Wynd), which back in the 1600s was a place to imprison witches: you can still see the iron rings to which they were chained. Take time to explore the large peaceful churchyard, which with its green marble tombs and Baroque monuments seems a million miles from the bustling main street. Harbour The old cobbled road of Ship Row winds down from Castlegate at the east end of Union Street to the north side of the harbour . Just off this steep road, peering out at the harbour through a striking modern glass facade, is the Maritime Museum (Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun noon-3pm; free), which combines a thoroughly modern, airy museum with Aberdeen's oldest-surviving building, Old Provost Ross's House , laced with labyrinthine corridors, low doorways and small rooms. Suspended above the foyer and visible from five different levels is a spectacular 27ft-high model of an oil rig, which, along with terrific views over the bustling harbour, serves as a constant reminder that Aberdeen's maritime links are very much alive today. While large sections of the museum are devoted to telling the story of North Sea oil and gas production, the older industries of herring-fishing, whaling, shipbuilding and lighthouses also have their place, with well-designed displays and audiovisual presentations, many of which draw heavily on personal reminiscences. Passages lead from various levels of the museum into Provost Ross's House, where intricate ships' models and a variety of nautical paintings and drawings are on display. At the bottom of Ship Row, the cobbles meet Market Street, which runs the length of the harbour . Here, brightly painted oil-supply ships, sleek cruise ships and peeling fishing boats jostle for position to an ever-constant clatter and the screech of well-fed seagulls. It's not the most attractive part of the city, but you'll encounter plenty of life and colour if you follow your nose down the road to the fish market , best visited early (7-8am). At the east corner of the harbour is Aberdeen's Footdee or "fitee" (an easy walk or bus #14 from Union Street), a quaint nineteenth-century fishermen's village of higgledy-piggledy cottages which back onto the sea, their windows and doors facing inwards to protect from storms but also, so they say, to prevent the Devil from sneaking in the back door. Here, in a great setting beside the lighthouse which marks the channel into the harbour, you'll find the Silver Darling , one of the finest seafood restaurants in the Northeast. Old Aberdeen An independent burgh until 1891, the tranquil district of Old Aberdeen , a twenty-minute ride north of the city centre on bus #20, has always maintained a separate village-like identity. Its medieval cobbled streets, tiny wynds and little lanes are beautifully preserved. The southern half of High Street is overlooked by King's College Chapel (Mon-Fri 9am-5pm; free), the first and finest of the college buildings, completed in 1495, with a chunky Renaissance spire. Named in honour of James IV, the chapel's west door is flanked by his coat of arms and those of his queen. The screen, the stalls (each unique) and the ribbed arched wooden ceiling are rare and beautiful examples of medieval Scottish woodcarving. The remains of Bishop Elphinstone's tomb and the carved pulpit from nearby St Machar's are also here. From the college, the cobbled High Street leads a short way north to St Machar's Cathedral on the leafy Chanonry (daily 9am-5pm, except during services; free), overlooking Seaton Park and the River Don. The site was reputedly founded in 580 by Machar, a follower of Columba, when he was sent by the latter to find a grassy platform near the sea, overlooking a river shaped like the crook on a bishop's crozier. This setting fitted the bill perfectly, and the cathedral, a huge fifteenth-century fortified building, became one of the city's first great granite edifices. |
| >> Featured Hotel Partners << |
Priority
Search Engine Submission © February 1st, 2008 E-Biz Travel Co., Ltd. All rights reserved. Central Reservation Office, Bangkok operating hours : Monday - Friday 9:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m., Saturday 9:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. (GMT+07:00) Office Close on Sunday & Thailand Public Holidays Bangkok Office : 31 Phyathai Building, 9th Floor, Room No. 916, Phyathai Road, Phyathai, Ratchthevi, Bangkok, Thailand 10400 Tel : +66 2246-1400 to 2 Fax : +66 2246-1403 USA Number : +1 603-821-4556 Please contact us for any suggestions or comments |