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Published: February 11th 2015
28 Dec
We hoped a train to Leeds early on the morning of 28 Dec. I'd not been to Leeds before so was looking forward to exploring another great city.
We arrived early morning and caught up with more of Ju's friends - Tracey and Anna. After a great local lunch we went to an American bar with pool and ping pong tables... I was seriously outnumber by the girls on the ping pong table.... we got so good we were playing the ball off the wood floor and brick walls. Three hours passed quickly and it was time to meet up with Amy.
We met Amy back at the train station and drove 15 minutes out of town to Amy's place. While Amy prepared a brilliant dinner I had a good visit with John and Frankie (18 months old) who for some reason thought my name was Paul (and refused to call me anything other than Paul). I got my first dose of Postman Pat and was hooked. Over the next 48 hours I watched a good two hours of the hypnotic stories about Pat and his cat Jess.... there is something extremely
addictive about that British programme - I had to go cold turkey or I'd still be watching episodes of the programme.
29 Dec
We went back into Leeds for a tour of the Royal Armoury and sushi train at Yo Sushi.
The armoury was amazing. To see the armour worn by famous English kings and knights and the history of their weapon development in one location was a real treat. The highlight had to be the actual dual with broad swords put on by two swordsman in the demonstration area - Hollywood sword fights are no where near as tactical or educational as this demonstration.
Yo Sushi was a nonstop train of food goodness. The four of us had a great visit while Frankie slumbered in his push chair. Then it was home for more Postman Pat 😊
30 Dec
Amy prepared a proper English breakfast before Rob and Lou picked us (and Uncle Paul) up for the drive north to Edinburgh. On the way there the SatNav took us on a bizarre long short cut through winding roads, while we could see a perfectly straight motorway on the other side of
the fields.
After checking into our accommodation we went to the Grassmarket area just below Edinburgh castle for dinner and to start our pub drinking adventure. Great dinner find Rob - surf and turf!
31 Dec
New Year's eve day saw us exploring Edinburgh, as I've been here before I won't go into much detail , however one new site was the writer's museum where they had famous Scottish author's works and artefacts - specifically Robert Louis Stevenson - Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
The evening was the real fireworks that we'd come for... the town was alive (despite the cold) with Hogmany festival.... the lights, music, crowds, activities... it was an epic winter festival! Biggest highly was the 325lb drunk Scotsman that invited himself to our table Jonh Ang Mor (not his full/complete name)... he proceeded to serenade our table with the ramblings of a drunken man who has experience much in his life.... "do you know who my brother is????? he's the best bagpiper in the world and is touring the States now... Wait you're an American...You aren't a blooooddddyyyyy REPUBLICAN are ye?" on and on and on he went.
We'd started the
Yo Sushi
Ju, John, Amy and Frankie (sleeping in the stroller)day and the drinking too early and despite all our best plans we ended up going back to our accommodation around 11pm and watched the fireworks from there rather than just below the castle mount....I'd call that peaking too soon. 😊
1 Jan
Edinburgh does this great New Year's day activity - it's like the Amazing Race, but for hung over people. They tell you to start at a certain point and from there you draw a random location that you make your way through town to. Once you arrive there is some kind of arts performance (dance, music, singing, museum etc...). We did this for a few hours until the pouring rain damped our spirits and we decided to watch the last of the Hobbit trilogy.... yawn. What was Peter Jackson thinking? did we really need three movies of three hours each?
2 Jan
Today we said goodbye to Edinburgh. On our way out of town we stopped in at Rosslyn Chapel (recent Dan Brown fame). I was pleasantly surprised with the Chapel, this is by far one of the most ornately stone carved chapels I've ever seen. The highlights for me were:
1. the apprentices column (look up the story online),
2. the original stencil marking on the workshop wall of the setout for the stone arches so that they could do their layout for each individual stone... to think those markings have survived all these centuries... no AutoCAD in those days.
3. the possible corncob carvings made some 50 or so years before Columbus "discovered" the Americas... it's interesting to read the history on these (non conspiracy sites) it's very possible that a family member of the person that founded the chapel actually did travel to the America's before Columbus.
The final tourist stop of the day was just south of the border between Scotland and England in a small Hamlet of Hazon. If I am to believe the genealogy work that family members have done I can track my genealogy (through my maternal grandfather - Hazen) to a Hugo de Heisende who in 1202 purchased 100 acres in the area around Hazon. There wasn't much to look at, other than to contemplate the small woods, farmhouses, miles of hedgerows and acres of fertile soil and wonder if my ancestor envisioned that someone from his
distant family would travel thousands of miles across an unknown world to stand in in that very spot 800 years after he'd purchased the land..... "that's deep man, deep".......
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Edinburgh
So many interesting pubs and so little time.