The Journey Day 7 Edinburgh, Scotland

September 9th, 2016 Belfast to Edinburgh, Scotland

Great Scot! I know a few!

We were up early for our flight. Our host had left us some things for breakfast. I had pancakes, I don't eat pancakes with syrup so it was easy to eat while repacking and getting ready. Kelsi ate toast. We both had some tea. We took a cab to the airport. It was a bit of a drive out of the city, but I guess that is pretty typical with airports. There was some difficulty with the card reader in the cab, but everything eventually worked out! 

At the airport, there were more issues with Kelsi's survivors, she bought too many tea towels! She had to fit all of them in her carry on which was difficult, but she eventually got the bag to zip. The there was more issues with the wifi and our electronic tickets. We could only get the Wifi in the lobby not at the first security point. So she had to take screenshots in order to make sure we could scan through the gates. All these mishaps were a bit of a bother, but I didn't mind too much.

Edinburgh, from Scott Monument

After the first point, there was a long security line. Luckily the Wifi worked in there and I took the time to buy tickets for a day trip to Lochness and the Highlands. When we finally got through security we stopped for coffee. Then we went our gate, there was already a queue. The queue was pretty long, in the states they call groups of people at a time, but there was just a single line. I'm not sure which is actually faster, but waiting in line is not better than waiting for your group to be called.

On the plane, I wrote some postcards and read. Kelsi closed her eyes, but I'm not sure if she slept too much. 

We arrived in Edinburgh just a bit after the scheduled time. The flight was short, but waiting to get off the plane took almost the same amount of time! We got our bags and took the tram to Princess Street. It was raining, but that didn't deter from the city's appeal. 

The city is so beautiful. It is built on hills and because this and the buildings, there is a bit of an illusion where two or three buildings look like one building! The hills make dragging luggage around more difficult, but I actually didn't mind too much because it gave me more time to look at everything and everyone. We had pretty great directions and didn't get lost so that made it more enjoyable. The room we were staying at is above the Paradise Palms, which is a bar. When we got in we were shown up to our room and informed that we were allowed a discount at the Palms. We took advantage of this after a quick dress change. I made the decision to wear ballet flats which didn't hold up later in the rain. So that dictated some of our later activities!

Punch Tea

At the Paradise Palms, the menu is American Soul Food and 100% meat free, many dishes are also vegan. I had a veggie burger and Kelsi had nachos. We shared a kettle of punch "tea". The Paradise Palm is so cute inside and the food is delicious. We were there pretty early so we had no way of knowing that at night Paradise becomes a very popular and crowded place. We would find out in short time.

After lunch, we walked back down to Princess street to visit the info center. Kelsi wanted to get more tea towels even if she didn't say so, but they didn't have any. We got a hop-on-hop off bus ticket, but before we took the tour we climbed Scott Monument.

Scott Monument

Scott Monument was built for Sir Walter Scott the Scottish writer of some note. He wrote novels like Ivanhoe and poetry like "Marmion". Which contains the famous quote, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave..." Edinburgh has many many famous authors and was named as the first city of literature in 2004. Every year in August, there is had a huge book Festival. It would have been great to see it! Anyway, Scott Monument is a Gothic style spire, that Charles Dickens said that was "a failure," but I quite liked it. We climbed to the top and the views were great. 

After the Monument, we took a turn on the Ferris wheel. I liked spinning our pod, but Kelsi did not! She was nice though and spun it very slowly.  

I wanted to take the hop-on hop-off tour bus after that because my shoes were soaked and I was hopping they would dry. They did a bit, but it was still raining after the tour was over. The tour was nice because we had a chance to look at sites that we wanted to explore more later. It was the last tour of the day, so it was too late to do any other site seeing that day.

After the bus tour, I waited in a doorway to keep my shoes from getting to wet until Kelsi was ready. We hurried back to our room so that I could change my shoes. We took a different street back up the hill to our rooms. We got pretty lost doing this. We didn't realize at the time that because the city is built on hills there are levels to the city. So when we went up a different street it didn't bring us back to the Royal Mile instead it brought us to a street below it. We only figured it out when we climbed some stairs. As soon as we climbed the stairs, we recognized some buildings and sites from the hop-on tour and were able to reorient our position. I eventually was able to change my shoes, but it took a lot of work.

Edinburgh

Once I had proper shoes, we walked over to Greyfriars Bobby's Bar for dinner. The is a restaurant is named after a very loyal Skye Terrier dog. After his owner died, he stayed at the grave side for 14 years. The dog could sometimes be called away to eat, but would return quickly after. What a cute story. There is also a statue of the dog in front and people will rub it's nose. The nose is shiny and worn compared to the rest of the statue. I'm not sure why they do so, but I patted it a few times. Kelsi started laughing at me when I would. There wasn't much of a wait, but perhaps that was because of the rain. I had a Tennets beer and I thought hard about trying haggis, but I was worried that I wouldn't like it. I am pretty adventurous when it comes to food, but I haven't seen many people review it favorably. Instead, I ate spotted sausage yum! Kelsi had a burger and a ginger beer.  During dinner Kelsi was a hero! A lady forgot her umbrella at her table, she's lucky that Kelsi was there!

The Elephant House

After dinner we walked up to the castle it was too late to go in so we turned around. We also saw a whiskey experience nearby that we decided we wanted to do later on. On our way back to our room, we stopped at the Elephant House for dessert and special hot chocolate drinks. It's a shop where some of the Harry Potter series was written, which thrilled the child and nerd in me. I tried not to be too much of geek about it. Inside the bathroom, the walls are covered with shout outs from fans about the series. It was so cool! 

We called it a night after that, going back to our room to find that the cute Paradise Palms from early was a machine of noise designed for keeping the delicate sleeper awake. Luckily, it ended around 1 am so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.