Charlie and I arrived in Edinburgh on Wednesday evening, right in the middle of rush hour. We located roughly where the hotel should be, but, as Charlie hadn't written down the exact address (not that that would really help in this country, as road names are SOMETIMES posted and numbering buildings seems to be completely optional), we did a couple of laps around the block, finally leaning out of the car window and asking the cabbie stopped next to us at the light where the hotel might be. We checked in, threw our bags down, and, after consulting the little tourist brochure (not the one with the typo mentioned in an earlier post), headed off to dinner.I had chosen a restaurant called "Iglu", because, when playing Scrabble online with him (when one could still do these things), Charlie had put down that dubious spelling of the word, and because the restaurant advertised itself as organic, and I'm a sucker for such things. It was a walk of about a mile, but down a lovely street, and right by the birthplace of Robert Louis Stevenson... of course I'd planned that all along. (Actually I would have totally missed it, had I not been trying to peer in the windows of all the houses, and wondered why that one was particularly nicely decorated. I thought it might have been a hotel of some sort, and even had a big brass plaque next to the door. That's when I saw what it really was.)
We walked into the restaurant, glanced into the bar downstairs which was empty except for one middle-aged man, and headed up the stairs, which is where the sign saying restaurant pointed us. At the top of the stairs we walked right into the kitchen, where we were kindly directed back downstairs where the food was being served this evening. So down we went (later seeing other people make this same trip, and wondering why they didn't cover the sign directing people up, or adding another one saying that they didn't really mean it), and settled in at a table by the window (despite it saying reserved... the barmaid told us to sit there, and just moved the sign to a different table). At this point the bartender and barmaid (I'm sure that there is a more PC term I'm supposed to use, but I've been here for a month, so I can only hear British English rushing around my head... you should hear me try to say any word that has a short "o" in it, for I get desperately confused as to how I short pronounce it) went over to aforementioned man in the pub, and told him it was time to leave. This went on for about five minutes, with the two of them going on about how he had had his one more drink, and he had promised to leave then. I'm not sure what had transpired earlier, but the poor old guy was pretty pathetic (not to mention apparently pretty drunk). He eventually left, and only returned one more time during the evening.
After that, dinner was uneventful and tasty (sticky toffee pudding goodness!). From there Charlie wanted to head into the heart of Edinburgh, The Royal Mile, the stretch of road leading away from the castle, which is laden with pubs. He said we just had to stop and have a drink there to say that we had done so. So we hiked up the hill and got to the top and saw absolutely nothing. There were about a thousand cashmere and/or kilt shops, interspersed with tea shops, every one of them closed. And not a tourist in sight. He was confused and disappointed. I was amused and reminded of downtown St. Louis (not that I hang out there much, but it is what I imagine most of it is like on a weeknight). We wandered down the street, eventually coming across a tour which Charlie wanted to follow... until I pointed out the vest on one fellow which said "Edinburgh Christian Tours". We walked on. We saw a group mingling, getting ready to go on the Haunted Edinburgh tour, but I thought it was scary enough above ground, so felt no need to go under!
The expected nightlife being somewhat of a bust (totally okay by me), we headed back to the hotel and watched the last 20 minutes of Twister, which, of course, I had already seen in some other hotel in years gone by.
Thursday was a bit brighter. The shops were all open, the tourists were out, and the weather was sunny... when it wasn't raining. We went to castle (almost got blown off the ramparts, it was so windy up there) and did the tourist thing. The castle complex has lots of museums in it, every one of them dedicated somehow to war or the Scottish Regiment or battles somehow. Not my cup of tea, but they were out of the wind, so we went into each and every one.
The first museum we wandered through was unexciting, so we went pretty quickly. We got to the last room, which ended up being on the other side of the courtyard from where we started. I saw a door, but was unsure if any alarms would go off if I opened it. I didn't really want to track back through the museum, so asked Charlie if he thought we could leave by this door. At which point it opened a little bit (showing me that alarms were not going to go off), then close, and then opened all the way. As the ghosts were obviously opening the door for us, I thought it rude not to accept this bit of civility, and we exited.
The rest of the castle, and Edinburgh in general, was nice, but not overwhelming. We met up with Adrian again, had lunch (my first fish and chips of my trip), wandered around a bit more, then headed home.
Put a check next to Scotland.
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