UK trip Day 2
Sept. 1st: Woke up disorientated and it took a good minute to figure out it was Monday and I was not in my bed but at least it was my husband I was next to :-P
Packed up to leave, had a "continental breakfast" not bad, coffee is aweful but that's to be expected. And whoa, the sun came out! Jennifer and mom came by and we followed them down to North Queensferry (the village under the bridges, seriously) to take pictures of the Forth rail bridge and the car bridge, these are massive! And Smoo started babbling about the whatsits and thingies and Jennifer thought it was neat and I just shook my head being I hear this at every bridge we visit. Then we drove over to South Queensferry to take pics of take a guess... yes, the south side of the bridges. The towns were named when the ferry was the only way to get across the firth. And then it started raining, cuz that's what it does here. We stopped in a gift shop, found a present for Billy and Bro/Annie and then we were off to the big city of Edinburgh, well outskirt since that's where I found a cheap B&B. Edinburgh has crazy narrow streets but we made it to the Drumorne B&B unscathed, to sit and wait a 1/2 hour for our room even though we called ahead to tell him exactly what time we'd show up since that's what he had said two days before.
Our room: uh, yea it's the 'family room' since that's all I could get, so they crammed a double and two single beds in the space for 1 bed normally, whatever... a closet for one person's clothes, and a tiny-a$$ 'en-suite' bathroom that small doesn't begin to describe how small this thing is. The shower stall is only maybe 6'6" tall? And you have to turn on the switch, and push the button... uh, to signal the little boy in the basement to start pedaling to pump the water to the 2nd floor? Oh, and yes everyone likes to leave windows open and there are no screens here, but in the city I didn't find any flying bugs.
And I've also noticed everyone walks in the rain with babies, dogs, jogging, and bicyclists. And after finally getting settled into the small room, we found the bus (double-decker!) and headed into downtown. We found the tourist centre to pick up our British Heritage Passes (£56/15 days for a ton of sites in the UK) and then found a pub for fish & chips for lunch. OMG awesome fish fry, lightly battered so you can actually taste the fish and the chips are thick slices which are always awesome. And I had that with flat soda, cuz apparently the Scottish like flat soda?
Then we headed up to the 'Royal Mile' (road between Edinburgh Castle and Palace of Holyroodhouse) on a hill, what's up with cities being on hills!!! And coblestone streets, my feet and calves never ached so bad... so these boots were not made for walking.
Halfway up the hill is St. Giles Cathedral, stopped in for a bit, the stain glass windows were amazing and the pipe organ was freakin huge! Then we continued the walk up the hill to the castle and eventually made it to the outer gate, 7 in all and there were 15? buildings on the grounds and all up hill!!! These coblestone streets are gonna kill me! But our tour guide was hilarious, and Irish and one of the guys in the group accidentally insulted him, Smoo was like great now it'll suck, but the tour guide was cool cuz at least no one asked stupid questions like where's France, is that it? (pointing to the kingdom of Fife which is where Jennifer lives) In one of the buildings we stopped in and listened to the Doomster talk about Scottish torture and executions and it was hilarious, he used audience participation. All in all the castle is amazing (and old) and yea it was on top of the hill but that made it that much cooler to visit and the view was simply amazing.
Then we started our long walk back down the hill, there are little alleys in the buildings to cut across to make it to the "closes" behind the buildings which was neat. Walked the shops of Princes Street and found an Italian place for supper. Oh, all the while it was windy slightly and raining off and on so we were not the prettiest people to walk into a nicer restaurant. So for an appetizer we had buffalo mozz and tomatoes (always delicious) and Smoo had duck pasta something in a brown plum something sauce (see how good I pay attention?) and I had spaghetti bolognse, always a favorite as it is hard to screw it up. Oh, and once again flat soda.
I was starting to get tired from all the walking so we took the bus back to the B&B, actually found it on the first try and stayed in for the rest of the night watching bad British soaps, comedy shows, and a little of the news.
Was about ready to go to bed when I spotted the first spider that Smoo killed (go spider hunter go!) it was little, maybe a couple centimeters... and then I found the next one and this one was practically 2 inches and I totally freaked being it was on Smoo's pillow when he got up to kill the first one. And after that drama we fell asleep, the street noise wasn't bad and I had brought a white noise machine anyways.
Packed up to leave, had a "continental breakfast" not bad, coffee is aweful but that's to be expected. And whoa, the sun came out! Jennifer and mom came by and we followed them down to North Queensferry (the village under the bridges, seriously) to take pictures of the Forth rail bridge and the car bridge, these are massive! And Smoo started babbling about the whatsits and thingies and Jennifer thought it was neat and I just shook my head being I hear this at every bridge we visit. Then we drove over to South Queensferry to take pics of take a guess... yes, the south side of the bridges. The towns were named when the ferry was the only way to get across the firth. And then it started raining, cuz that's what it does here. We stopped in a gift shop, found a present for Billy and Bro/Annie and then we were off to the big city of Edinburgh, well outskirt since that's where I found a cheap B&B. Edinburgh has crazy narrow streets but we made it to the Drumorne B&B unscathed, to sit and wait a 1/2 hour for our room even though we called ahead to tell him exactly what time we'd show up since that's what he had said two days before.
Our room: uh, yea it's the 'family room' since that's all I could get, so they crammed a double and two single beds in the space for 1 bed normally, whatever... a closet for one person's clothes, and a tiny-a$$ 'en-suite' bathroom that small doesn't begin to describe how small this thing is. The shower stall is only maybe 6'6" tall? And you have to turn on the switch, and push the button... uh, to signal the little boy in the basement to start pedaling to pump the water to the 2nd floor? Oh, and yes everyone likes to leave windows open and there are no screens here, but in the city I didn't find any flying bugs.
And I've also noticed everyone walks in the rain with babies, dogs, jogging, and bicyclists. And after finally getting settled into the small room, we found the bus (double-decker!) and headed into downtown. We found the tourist centre to pick up our British Heritage Passes (£56/15 days for a ton of sites in the UK) and then found a pub for fish & chips for lunch. OMG awesome fish fry, lightly battered so you can actually taste the fish and the chips are thick slices which are always awesome. And I had that with flat soda, cuz apparently the Scottish like flat soda?
Then we headed up to the 'Royal Mile' (road between Edinburgh Castle and Palace of Holyroodhouse) on a hill, what's up with cities being on hills!!! And coblestone streets, my feet and calves never ached so bad... so these boots were not made for walking.
Halfway up the hill is St. Giles Cathedral, stopped in for a bit, the stain glass windows were amazing and the pipe organ was freakin huge! Then we continued the walk up the hill to the castle and eventually made it to the outer gate, 7 in all and there were 15? buildings on the grounds and all up hill!!! These coblestone streets are gonna kill me! But our tour guide was hilarious, and Irish and one of the guys in the group accidentally insulted him, Smoo was like great now it'll suck, but the tour guide was cool cuz at least no one asked stupid questions like where's France, is that it? (pointing to the kingdom of Fife which is where Jennifer lives) In one of the buildings we stopped in and listened to the Doomster talk about Scottish torture and executions and it was hilarious, he used audience participation. All in all the castle is amazing (and old) and yea it was on top of the hill but that made it that much cooler to visit and the view was simply amazing.
Then we started our long walk back down the hill, there are little alleys in the buildings to cut across to make it to the "closes" behind the buildings which was neat. Walked the shops of Princes Street and found an Italian place for supper. Oh, all the while it was windy slightly and raining off and on so we were not the prettiest people to walk into a nicer restaurant. So for an appetizer we had buffalo mozz and tomatoes (always delicious) and Smoo had duck pasta something in a brown plum something sauce (see how good I pay attention?) and I had spaghetti bolognse, always a favorite as it is hard to screw it up. Oh, and once again flat soda.
I was starting to get tired from all the walking so we took the bus back to the B&B, actually found it on the first try and stayed in for the rest of the night watching bad British soaps, comedy shows, and a little of the news.
Was about ready to go to bed when I spotted the first spider that Smoo killed (go spider hunter go!) it was little, maybe a couple centimeters... and then I found the next one and this one was practically 2 inches and I totally freaked being it was on Smoo's pillow when he got up to kill the first one. And after that drama we fell asleep, the street noise wasn't bad and I had brought a white noise machine anyways.