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Published: June 16th 2017
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Edinburgh
View of castle from our hotel window....how moody looking is that! Arrived to freezing cold, pouring rain and a howling half, yep we are in Scotland! Picked up rental car, it's a Skoda....Stephen less than impressed, it's very skodaish....the rear wiper goes on of its own accord and there is no rubber on it, very annoying and probably not great for the back window.
Find our hotel fairly easily, we have an awesome view of Edinburgh Castle and within walking distance of the tourist area, restaurants and main shopping street. By the time we get to the hotel we have time for a quick unpack and then a short hike in the driving rain to Howies restaurant for dinner. Very nice, I had their version of a lobster reminded me of a cross between a NZ cray and a Morton Bay Bug, Stephen had a beef pie, looked a bit bland really, basically beef, carrot and mashed potato. the rain had eased by the time we left so wandered back to the hotel window shopping on the way.
The rain had cleared by morning, but their summer days in no way resemble anything we would consider summer. The locals keep saying at least the weather is great for you....ummmm yes.....what
Edinburgh
Yep we r in Scotland else can you say really. That's the locals we can actually understand we are doing a lot of smiling and nodding! The best breakfast we have had on holiday so far, Stephen even bravely tried haggis and judged it not too bad, I will take his word for it!
The plan for the morning was the castle, walked up the hundreds of stairs doing more window shopping and trying to avoid the hundreds of tourists doing the tour group shuffle. The queue to get in was quite long but moved at a steady pace, probably took us just over half an hour to get in. We spent over four hours there, it was really interesting, we did the self tour with headphones. I was very brave and went through some narrow stairwells full of people to see the Crown Jewels and the Stone of Destiny or the Stone of Scone (which Stephen had never heard of and when I tried explaining what it was to him he had me doubting myself), however it was in the same cabinet as the Crown, Sceptre and Sword, though questioning him afterward Stephen still didn't see it! Watching the 2pm firing if the
Edinburgh
The Grassmarket canon was funny, you wait and wait while the man stands there with his hand in the air with the firing button, when he presses it everyone jumps a hundred foot in the air, no matter how much you tell yourself it's going to be loud you just can't imagine how loud!
We then had a look in the mill shops trying to find some tartan for Rylies dancing kilt. They didn't gave what we needed but gave me a name to try in our way south in a couple of days. They did have lots of nice cashmere stuff to look at though! Our next stop was a whiskey bar for some tasters. Enjoyed most except the last which was very very smoky tasting, Stephen reckoned it tasted like burning rubber smells, can't say I disagreed with him. The barman who served us was from Hamilton so was nice to be able to not concentrate hard on speaking clearly enough to be understood!
We were soon on our way feeling a lot warmer after our few whiskeys. A bit more window shopping on our walk back to the hotel before changing and looking for dinner. The first
three or four places we walked into were full, there were seats outside but it was way too cold to sit there. such a waste really as it is light until well after 10pm but it's freezing!
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