Edinburgh Arrival

Michelle took a look at the last post and said something to the effect of, "You're not going to do the day by day thing again, are you?" which I took to mean that she wasn't particularly fond of the day by day detailing of our travels. As a compromise, I will do a post for each day, but I'll try to get them posted as soon as possible - probably all by end of day tomorrow, but no promises.

We took the train from London to Edinburgh, arriving in Edinburgh around 3 pm. The whole story is that to get to Edinburgh from our little place in Surrey, we had to ride three trains, a bus (thanks to our local train station being closed), and two different Tube lines (thanks to the one we wanted to use being closed) with luggage and two children. Somehow, we still made it - which is either a testament to our travelling ability, or the grace of God, or both. So, the vast majority of our day was spent in transit from London to Edinburgh, and was largely uneventful, although we did meet a student from Oregon who is studying in Edinburgh on our way who gave us a few tips.

Upon our arrival it was raining and windy, which wasn't terribly surprising, since the BBC had been predicting rain for the entire week up until about 24 hours before we left. We walked the couple of blocks to our hotel and then back out to explore Edinburgh in the little daylight there was left.

I have to admit that the guidebooks left me expecting to be unimpressed with Edinburgh - and in terms of "sightseeing", the city does pale in comparison with other more well-known cities. However, I found the city itself to be much more enjoyable than just its sights would indicate. It doesn't hurt that Edinburgh Castle, arguably the main tourist attraction, dominates the skyline, and keeps drawing you to look at it again and again. All around the Royal Mile leading from the castle, the streets and buildings feel genuinely medieval. We came up from around the western side of the Castle, and then headed a bit down the Royal Mile before pulling into Monster Mash for a bite to eat - and where I had my first taste of haggis, neeps, and tatties. Haggis, for the uninformed, is sheep's heart, liver, and oatmeal, traditionally stuffed into a sheep stomach. I'm pretty sure I was missing the stomach (you can see the picture below) but it was surprisingly good. Neeps are turnips, and tatties are mashed potatoes.

After dinner, we piled into a cab for the ride back to the hotel as it was rainy and windy again, and called it a day. I will say that I have now officially decided that I prefer the Lonely Planet guides over the other more generally available guides. They provide solid detail on the places, offer good (yet budget-minded) recommendations for food and lodging, and are quite reliable. They are the ones who listed Monster Mash, and it turned out to be one of the best places we ate the entire trip.