To the capital and don't spare the horses
Trip Start
Dec 26, 2009
1
15
44
Trip End
Feb 14, 2010
Where I stayed
Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Went out to the car this morning to discover we had snow last night, the bonus of this was that the roads and footpaths seem a lot less slippery. First stop was Bannockburn where the Scottish had their last win. I decided to stay in the car but Ron went off wandering in the snow and had a look around. There was an amazing statue of Robert the Bruce as he lead the forces on that day.
Next stop was Castle Campbell, unfortunately there was a 700 metre climb up a hill and then once there we couldn’t work out how to actually get across to the castle. I was taken out by a random dog called Benji who was on the run from his owner’ he suddenly turned around and headed down the hill and I was in his way so he knocked me A over T, then the little buggar decided that I wanted to play and was slobbering all over me. It was even more embarrassing as the was a man behind me watching the whole event unfold. I of course couldn’t get back up and while I am sure the man wanted to laugh he was trying to act concerned about whether I was ok. I don’t think the owner was too impressed when Ron told her that she should keep him on a leash, I am sure she is telling all the locals about the mad Aussie on the hill. After this we gave up on actually reaching the castle and headed down the hill,
From here it was on to Edinburgh to drop off the car, while this seemed like a simple thing to do there was no signage telling us where to go so we did a lap of honour around the station which is huge then finally decided to drive in to the centre of it. It was bizarre driving between trains and there was the depot for the car hire place.
Car disposed of we stopped for a coffee and muffin at Costa (you are right Liz they make very nice coffee), it was about now we appreciated just having one backpack each as we couoldn;t book in to the hotel for another 3 hours. So we headed to the top of Waverley Bridge to take the bus tour we booked. I thought I had booked a 1 hour tour but it turns out we had 3 tours and can hop on and hop off anywhere on any of the buses for 24 hours (bargain!!!). We went of one that took us around all the older parts of Edinburgh and out to Leith where the Britannia is now berthed as a museum , it had a really quirky commentary with lots of useless bits of information (none of course that I can remember now L ) We then boarded another bus to do a tour of the city area which we realised goes almost to the door of our hotel (which was a bonus) so we did the complete circuit going past the Castle, the old Grassmarkets where they used to sell cattle and hang people, along the Royal Mile amongst many other places.
As it was 3pm we remained on the bus until we got back to the stop where we needed to check in for our hotel. We had a slight problem when the first room they gave us already had people in it but they very quickly found us another unoccupied room. We have now done all our washing, had a cup of tea and some shortbread (well we are in Scotland) and are now heading out to explore this amazing city a bit further.
The hotel is in a great spot being within walking distance to heaps of restaurants so we wandered around looking at the area then headed back up Princess st and ended up in an Italian Restaurant where I had a lovely pasta dish with prawns and Ron had a pretty pathetic attempt at Caesar Salad.
