Yesterday was a long day. A very, very long day. Thursday morning, we went to the airport with the girls and Pop who took a plane to Denver on their way to Laramie. Then we took our own plane to Philly, to then get on the next one to Manchester, UK.
The idea of flying overnight to Europe is to sleep on the plane. Nice idea. Didn't happen. Savannah barely slept and I didn't sleep at all. So we were quite tired when we got there.
Then we got worse news: Vin and Sheila's plane had been cancelled. They got on one plane and had to get off for mechanical failure. Fortunately United got another plane for them! Which also had mechanical failure. Boo.
So they still aren't here. But they should be landing soon. It sours the beginning of our trip but hopefully it won't impact the overall vacation.
As for us, our timing on everything went perfectly well. From Manchester we took a train to Edinburgh, then a cab to our bed and breakfast, 23 Mayfield.
This place is great. A very old stone house, it is much bigger than it first looks from the street as it has 10 rooms, all themed. Ours is the Tudor room and is delightful. Many of the furnishings including the blankets and drapes are homemade just for the inn.
Soon after we arrived, Sheila's little sister, who recently moved to London, arrived and met us. She had planned on doing Edinburgh with us since it was so close for her. And since she looks and sounds like Sheila, it almost felt like Sheila was here with us. Now if we could have just gotten Vinny's dad then we would have had the bizarro Vin and Sheila instead of the real things.
We needed lunch. Our innkeeper, Ross, suggested a great lunch spot, Salisbury Arms. Even at 3:30 it was busy. We had a great lunch outside on a terrific day. Wait, that's really newsworthy:
The weather here is spectacular!! It has been sunny since we got here and all the locals keep telling us how lucky we are. We told them they need to thank us, we just brought some to share from Arizona.
After lunch Ross had told us to go on a wee (yes he did say "wee", woo-hoo, Scotland!) little walk to see the city. He directed us to a side road that went up a little hill so we could see the town. So after we ate we set off for the little hill.
It was not wee. It was a giant mountain.
We got nervous at seeing it but remained determined. As we got closer it got bigger and more imposing. But we did it with very little whining, which all came from me.
We were not prepared to hike up a thousand feet as we were in flip flops. But when we got to the top it was amazing. The view of the town was spectacular. We could see in 3 directions and get a good view of everything. But the highlight of course:
Edinburgh Castle
The castle dominates the skyline and is very regal perched on a hill in the center of town. We will tour it today so stay tuned tomorrow.
We then walked down, went by Scottish parliament and up the Royal Mile, so named because it is the basis of the mile: it Is one mile from the castle to parliament. We tour that today too.
We then walked back to the hotel and our total walk after not sleeping was about 4 miles so we were hurting, or at least our feet and legs were.
Following a quick rest (in which I almost fell totally asleep) we headed out for dinner. We didn't really know what we wanted so we walked a little bit and couldn't find anything that was still serving dinner at 8pm. We were shocked that places stopped serving food so early but that is the culture. They all switch to drinking but we needed some grub. So we took a cab back to the Royal Mile where there are lots of places. We stopped at one and sat outside, but they didn't act like they wanted us and after waiting for a long time for our drinks, we left and found a place that did want us, Ranjab Indian restaurant.
We were the only ones in there so we were nervous. Plus Savannah didn't know how to feel about Indian food. But we had the waiter/owner recommend some items and he chatted with us most of the time giving us some local insight.
The food was terrific! And Savannah loved it so that was nice to see. And even though we wanted something local, we do not have good Indian food in Phoenix and it is considered amazing here in the UK so we did sort of do local.
After dinner we went home and crashed hard, but not before we got to do FaceTime with our little girls and see their smiling, happy faces which made our day.
This morning we woke up to another amazing day. We had breakfast with Emily in the beautiful breakfast room and then Vinny and Sheila arrived! After they clean up, we will head out for the day.
Click on the link below to see pictures from our day:
1 comment:
Hiking in flip-flops -- how very Scottish!
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