A Taste of Edinburgh

I was pretty pooped last night (it's actually Sunday morning here) but did intend to submit a brief post. However, blogspot seemed to be down and I was really too tired to stay up waiting for it to recover. I've got some time before breakfast is served in our wonderful B&B, the kids just left to get their bus back to the car park, so I'll try to at least "publish" Edinburgh, part 1 this morning.

To begin with, I don't know the name of the lovely church we caught in the photogenic sunset light last night. There are a ton of picturesque churches here, and we only know what a couple of them are. Only having one full day here, we really didn't get to do much more than scratch the surface of this very rich tourist and cultural environment.

I have to start with the train ride here, though, since it was a very pleasant experience. About 5 hours all together, with 3 or 4 brief stops along the way, it was comfortable, convenient, and even had wireless access on board! What a civilized way to travel. And it gave us a great view of some lovely English and Scottish countryside, of which the scene at the left is typical.

Today we have to take a bus from here to Newcastle, since they're working on the tracks, but then will take up with the train from there. A new and hopefully interesting experience. Hal and Sally tell me that driving on all roads other than the freeways in the UK is very exciting (putting a positive spin on it) so we'll see how it looks from the bus window.

After depositing the kids at their hostel, my colleagues and I found our B&B, the Grosvenor Gardens, which is lovely, well-run and commodious. I'd recommend it in a heartbeat to Edinburgh travelers. The amenities in the room included this goodie tray. Yes, that's a small decanter of Scotch! I did sample it, but am not knowledgeable enough to say how good it was. But it certainly looks lovely, doesn't it?!

Not long after I settled in, and right on schedule, the kids showed up. They used a free carpark on the outskirts of town and took a bus in, which deposited them about 5 minutes away from me. We then proceeded to have a fine Indian dinner at Omar Khayyam, during which I got a blow-by-blow description of their fabulous hikes and interesting travels through Wales and the Lake District. I'm sure in the days to come Hal's blog will have lots of info on these adventures (at least, after the internet problems get fixed at the flat, which will hopefully happen Monday).

I'm going to have to quit in a second and go grab breakfast before heading to the train station, so I'll just leave you with a couple of glimpses of what I'll try and cover in the next post or two: a view from Arthur's Seat, the wonderful hike we took yesterday morning...
...A sample of exhibits at the National Museum of Scotland (that's a replica of Mary, Queen of Scots' tomb in the foreground—the real one is in Westminster Abbey but you can't take pictures there—and Sally (one of Mary's descendants? Mamaw always said....) is in the background examining the "Maiden," a sort of guillotine).



We also saw the famous Edinburgh Castle, but I'll save pictures of that for the continuation of our Edinburgh activities.