Tale of twos: Two weekends, two British capitals - London and Edinburgh.

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We promised when we posted our West Midlands blog that we’d try to keep everyone updated about our trips around the UK as well as the continent. So here it is- our blog of British Capitals…

First London.

Since we first arrived in the UK more than 18 months ago, we haven’t really been back to see anything in London. So with a mate of ours, Andray, soon leaving the UK we decided to pop down to see what everyone keeps raving about - at least for a day.

We bought cheap train tickets and arrived into St Pancras early on Saturday morning. We sorted ourselves out with Oyster cards for the underground, dropped by a newsagent to pick up a pocket sized London guidebook and enjoyed some porridge for breakfast before catching the tube (‘mind the gap’) to our first destination.

We arrived at the Tower of London just as it opened and without a queue for tickets, it made the morning’s planning easy - Tower it is.

Dating from 1066, when it was built by an invading Frenchman (William the Conqueror), the Tower of London has functioned as many things over the years - palace, armoury, vault, prison and it is famously where King Henry VIII’s 2nd wife and mother of Elizabeth I, Anne Boleyn, was executed- scandal!

Anyway we entered through the gatehouse and spent the first half hour or so pottering around the outer walls and towers listening to our audio guide. With the crowds starting to file in, we decided to see the Crown Jewels sooner rather than later.

We passed through a two foot thick stainless steel door, then numerous slide shows giving the history associated with the various sceptres, crowns, and broaches before eventually arriving at a small room with a series of glass cases containing the British (English) Crown jewels.

On either side of the cases was an escalator that we jumped on to ride past the amazing bling with our mouths open in awe. Because there were few other visitors at this time, we jumped back on the escalator for another and yet another closer look.

Back outside we headed for the central White Tower, which houses the armoury museum. There were rooms full of muskets, pistols, swords and spears- in fact most things that you need to kill someone. In amongst all this, which in itself was quite fascinating, was the actual armour of King Henry VIII. Now he was known for his womanising, his fairly ineffective rule and his scrap with the Pope, but what we didn’t appreciate was how large he was! The armour was quite podgy (especially for medieval times)!

Leaving the White Tower we decided that we hadn’t really experienced the Tower of London, until we had joined a Beefeater tour. So we followed the men in blue and red to hear their stories of the Tower and the reason why they are called ‘beefeaters’.

Our original intent when we arrived at the Tower was to kill an hour or two before catching up with Andray, but it took five to see what we did, and when he arrived to meet us at lunchtime we still hadn’t seen everything! But we were keen to spend the day with our mate we left the Tower and jumped back on the tube headed for north London.

In the same way that London is a world crammed into a city, Camden markets seemed to be London crammed into a market. Arriving, our lunch options from the food stalls included Spanish, Japanese, Thai, Moroccan, Italian, West African, British, Chinese, Indian, West Indian, and Mexican foods. The market stalls were just as eclectic and had everything from antiques, and home wares to independent fashion and outfits for raves! Indeed, something for everyone.

We spent a few hours strolling throughout the hundreds of stalls before setting off for the city centre. We checked out the lights of Piccadilly Circus before searching out a good old English pub to share a beer and a chat to give Andray a proper send off.

On a side street, a short walk from the lights of Piccadilly Circus, we managed to find an unpretentious pub with real ale where we whiled away our last few hours of our London daytrip before jumping back on the tube, then a train for the midlands. London really is a lot of fun.

Oh, and why are Beefeaters called Beefeaters? The short answer is - they don’t really know…

After our London trip a few weeks later we headed off to Edinburgh.

Ariana had been having a really busy time at work, so to celebrate the end of all the chaos, Lachlan organised a weekend away. The destination was a secret (but you know it because it’s in the title of the blog…). On Saturday morning we got up and jumped on a train heading for Skegness - a quintessential English seaside resort town in Lincolnshire (read: sea facing town overcrowded with fish’n’chip shops, amusement arcades, and donkey rides on the beach - basically anything to keep you busy because its too cold to go for a swim).

Although Ariana is unlikely to admit it, she was quietly relived when we jumped off our Skegness bound train and joined a long distance train heading north. At this point Ariana was still unsure where we are going, but she guessed that we weren’t going to Brighton.

We passed through Doncaster, York, and the very pretty Durham on our way north. We were impressed with Newcastle, and just as we got to the northern side of the city the surroundings were blanketed white from recent snowfall. A few hours further on we had our first glimpses of the north sea as periodically the coastline became visible from the train.

The second last stop was just inside the English boarder at Berrick-Upon-Tweed and before too long we arrived into Edinburgh Waverly station.

We headed straight to the hotel but couldn’t check in just yet so we wandered into the old town for some lunch. It was our second time on holidays to Scotland and it didn’t take us long to realise that whilst there are many similarities with England, Scotland is clearly different. No doubt that’s due in part to the fact that the act of union wasn’t really that long ago (only 81 years older than the colonial settlement of Australia).

After lunch we whiled away the afternoon strolling along the cobblestone streets on and off the Royal Mile before meandering back down the hill to our hotel on Princes Street where we checked in.

Ariana was pleased to see that we weren’t staying at a backpackers and she was even more impressed when we entered our room to find champagne, glasses, a fruit platter and chocolates. The blinds were open and through the windows the sun was setting behind Edinburgh’s old town. I dropped down to one knee, produced the ring from my pocket, and asked Ariana to marry me. She burst into tears and (luckily) accepted.

We sat enjoying our champagne whilst taking in the view of the lights of the old town before deciding to head out for dinner to celebrate. In the new town, not far from Edinburgh’s theatre we found a tiny little Sicilian restaurant where we enjoyed our first dinner as an engaged couple. After dinner on the way home we made a short detour into to a little candle lit pub to share a scotch and a warm mulled wine - we couldn’t have been happier.

Sunday morning, after a massive Scottish breakfast including black pudding, we climbed back up the Royal mile to Edinburgh Castle. With perfectly clear skies the first thing that impressed us about Edinburgh castle was just how high it was. The views from the top were superb.

Accompanied (again) by an audio guide we ducked in and out of the sights of the castle including the Scottish military museum, St Margaret’s chapel and the old royal residence, which is now converted to house the Honours of Scotland.

Within the Honours of Scotland, which included the Scottish Crown, the Stone of Scone was the most interesting item on display. It’s a large sandstone block on which the monarchs of Scotland used to be crowned. During the wars of Scottish Independence in the late 13th Century, Edward I of England (good mate of the Welsh too) captured the stone and took it Westminster Abbey where it was integrated into a chair for the purposes of crowning English monarchs. It remained there until 1950 when a group of Scottish students pinched it and took it back to Scotland (avoiding the road blocks which formed at the boarder to search for it).

The students accidentally broke it in two but with the help of a Glaswegian stonemason it was patched up. They then left it at an Abbey 120 miles north of Edinburgh. The London police discovered where it was and whisked it back to Westminster where it stayed until 12 years ago when it was decided that it could return to Scotland (but must come back for future coronations). A great story!

All the sight seeing was hungry work so on leaving the castle, we stopped at a pub just off the Royal Mile for some lunch. To keep the Scottish food theme from breakfast, Lachlan ordered haggis with tatties and neeps (mash potatoes and swedes) and Ariana tucked into a Yorkshire pudding filled with sausages and mash. Bloated, we headed off back down the Mile, poking our heads around various shops along the way.

At 3:00pm the sun was starting to set and by 3:45pm it was dark. With another delicious meal in us, we called it a night. After all, with the proposal on Saturday the only planned activity for the weekend, we had done what I’d brought us here for!

With some time left on our final day before our train back to Nottingham, we filled up on another massive Scottish breakfast before heading to the Scottish National Museum. Impressively, it was free and we spent the first couple of hours of the day gradually making it up the 7 floors of exhibits learning many things about the nation’s history.

But time was short, so we walked back across to the new town to catch a bus to Edinburgh’s harbour - Leith. We weren’t too sure where to get off so Lachlan asked the driver. His response: “I don’t know sir. I’m not sure where you want to get off”. Having established that we wanted to go to Leith he told us to wait for the last stop. As we jumped off the bus he told us that the Royal yacht Britannia is straight ahead, the shopping centre is to the left and round to the right is a whole bunch of restaurants. How helpful!

The reason we chose Leith was to find a Scottish seafood lunch so we strolled in the direction that the bus driver had pointed and sure enough we found a row of restaurants along the waterfront. We chose one called Fishers- naturally! After a great lunch of tasty shellfish we jumped on a bus and headed back into town to collect our bags in time to catch the train home.

And so our weekend in Edinburgh came to an end. It’s a beautiful city and now that it's the city where we got engaged - it’ll always be special for us.

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Photos

On guard!
Protecting Windsor bling at the Tower of London

The White Tower
Tower of London

Guarding the walls
In the middle ages iron was such a popular discovery that even guards were made from it! (No, not really...)

Ravens
Apparently if they ever leave the Tower the monarchy will fall

Edinburgh Castle
The view from the roof of the Scottish National Museum

Pub
The Royal Mile

Cannon Fodder
View through the battlements, Edinburgh Castle

Thistle
Scottish Military Museum, Edinburgh Castle

Edinburgh New Town
But still old...