I Like Birds: Things still don’t quite go according to plan

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We eventually made it into Edinburgh’s Waverley station six and a half hours after starting the trip. We could have been annoyed by this, but the benefit of getting up so early was that it was still early afternoon, and assuming nothing else went wrong, we still had the best part of the day to see the sights. As soon as you step out of the station, you are immediately hit by what a wonderful city Edinburgh is: in one direction there is the classically built old town, looking impressively tall as the skyscrapers of their day while still maintaining their old world looks. In another direction, there is the newer part of town, looking a little bit more spacious and hiding behind the huge gothic Scott Monument. Turn around again and you can make out the sea, and once more there is Arthur’s Seat, the huge hill in Holyrood Park that brings the beauty of the Scottish hills right to the edge of the city. Even without all this though, we instantly knew Edinburgh was the epitome of Scottish sophistication and style because there was a busker on the corner sporting a plastic guitar and wearing flippers. It is possible that he thought that the flippers would make him look a bit crazy and get more money in, but while he looked pretty crazy it seemed to have the effect of making people cross the road to avoid him, so I’ll assume he was just preparing for a flood instead. There may have been logic to this idea, because the forecast wasn’t the best and the rain was just starting to creep in as we arrived in the city.

With a lack of prior planning as to what to see and do here, our first job was to wander aimlessly about and get a feel for the place, second to get breakfast (or lunch as it had now become), and third to find our hotel before they decided we weren’t coming and gave our rooms to somebody else. We didn’t know it at the time, but we had taken a beeline right into the posh part of the city, and we walked in and out of several pubs full of people in evening suits or pensioners looking down on these scruffy tourists in jeans and t-shirts before we finally found a place to stop for food. The Treacle Bar was probably designed and built by art students at Edinburgh University, and as such had a lovely airy atmosphere, nicely designed walls, a good range of music and beer. John took in his first taste of Haggis on his all-day Scottish breakfast, and once the food had gone the same way as a couple of pints we decided it was high time we found our hotel. Then we saw the rain and changed our mind, particularly as there were many of those upmarket down-nose kind of people milling about looking like drowned rats. We gave it a while then decided to brave the weather, at least back to the train station where we could hop into a taxi. On the way we noticed a cathedral, and reasoning that it was dry inside, popped in for a look around. As cathedrals go, it was pretty unimpressive. Maybe it was a result of being only the second cathedral in the city, after the huge St Giles’ on the Royal Mile, but something in there made us all look around for a minute or so, make a polite nod of appreciation to the vicar, then head back out into the rain.

With the rain not really letting up, and the hotel being a couple of miles out of the city centre, we decided to jump in a taxi. I was pretty sure that the route from the station to the hotel was one long road, so when the driver turned off and took us on a bit of a mystery tour, I was pretty sure that we wouldn’t have to keep walking this far for the rest of the weekend and also confident that this man was ripping us off. Nevertheless, he got us to the hotel dry and we could simply check in and relax for an hour or so before making our way into town for the evening. On a day when, so far, not much had gone to plan this was a ridiculous idea, of course, and as the receptionist looked for our booking for slightly longer than seemed necessary when you are just looking for a name on a small list, I began to worry. I was fully justified in that suspicion when she turned around and told me that she definitely didn’t have our booking. If it was anywhere else, we’d have been stuck: no money would have exchanged hands and they had no obligation to house us. I knew full well that they had already taken the full amount out of my bank account though, having not expected it and finding myself short of cash as a result a few weeks before. The manager arrived and told us, in no uncertain terms, that we were wrong, it was against their policy to take the money before arrival and we had best start looking elsewhere or borrow a cardboard box from the local tramp. After requesting the use of the internet, and showing the money leaving my account and heading straight to the Northumberland Hotel, the manager looked a little bit sheepish and ‘couldn’t understand how that could have happened’, which is blagger’s code for ‘I haven’t thought of an excuse yet, give me an hour or so and I’ll suddenly understand how that happened by finding an unnamed other to blame’.

The Northumberland Hotel had a room for the first night, and would find us alternative accommodation for the second, which suited us fine because the place was a bit of a dive. Maybe the issue on arrival had affected our judgement, or maybe it was the extension lead screwed to the wall that acted as plug sockets, possibly run in extensions across the whole hotel from one socket down in reception. Possibly it was the electrical equipment, next due for a safety check in December 2007. I could have been the classy Asda-own brand soap in the bathroom, or possibly the unbranded bottle of something that was in the shower. The lack of branding on the something reminded me of a bottle you would find in a science lab at school, and I wondered if the Scots washed their hair with hydrochloric acid. On the positive side, the hotel did have a trampoline in the car park.

John took a power nap while the rest of us mocked the hotel (to be fair, it was cheap, clean and had beds, so our mockery was slightly unjustified), then after an hour or so we hit the city for a bit of tourism and a pint or two. Not wanting to walk too far in the rain, and equally not wanting to be ripped off by another taxi driver, we tested out Edinburgh’s bus system. The buses stop right outside the hotel, run every few minutes, are clean, run on time and have a clever system that tells you exactly when the next bus is due, either on the bus stop itself or on your phone if you have one of those clever phones that do everything. They are a stark contrast to the buses back home that turn up when they feel like it, usually smell of stale sweat and other unmentionables and make you want to disinfect your entire body when you get off.

Tonight’s task was to check out the Royal Mile, Edinburgh’s most touristy area, full of grand old buildings running for a mile between the castle and Holyrood Abbey, with the more impressive of the two cathedrals, St Giles, somewhere in the middle. We made our way up the mile, past rows of coffee shops and stalls selling Scottish themed trinkets, and eventually stopped at Deacon Brodie’s, a pub recommended to Lyndsey and place to stop and sample some ale. I went with a coriander-tinged Scottish ale while Lyndsey went with the Scottish classic: a pint of Tenants lager. The Tenants was later described as wee-water, or a less polite alternative to it, and served as a reminder that sticking to proper ale was the way forward for the remainder of the weekend. The rest of the night was spent in and around the castle end of the Royal Mile, mixing up the walking around seeing the sights with the sitting around drinking the culture. By 11.00, we were ready to head back to the hotel and get some sleep, but not before John sampled the local chippy. Apart from chips, the place sold pretty much everything you would expect from Scottish stereotypes, from battered Mars Bars to haggis pizza, but this was the kind of place locals came to after ten pints of Tenants, so nobody strayed too far from chips, though John did chance a portion of fish with his. Once back at the hotel, the function room was in full swing, hosting the evening reception for a Scottish wedding. This seemed very similar to an English wedding, the music was bad, everyone had drunk a little bit too much and the hotel manager was walking around taking pictures, no doubt to promote his hotel to other unsuspecting tourists who were all too happy to hand over their money for the chance to stay somewhere else. We considered joining the party, particularly as the music was almost as loud in the rooms as downstairs, but made do with singing along to the party classics until the effects of a long day caught up and we drifted off to sleep.

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