This morning we woke at 6 am in order to catch our train to Edinburgh. It's a pity to leave York so soon, as we have enjoyed the hotel and have made buddies with a lady from Maine who's daughter is studying in town. People have been really friendly here!
We spoke with the girls who own the hotel yesterday and let them know we have an early departure. They were kind enough to offer putting some breakfast out early for us, as we were leaving before the set breakfast time. Maria set up our breakfast, which consisted of cereal, banana, croissants, and tea.
After a few days in York we were much better at navigating the crooked and often unlabeled streets and had no issue finding the train station.
The train to Edinburgh took a little under 3 hours. Once again, is was a high speed train (or at least as fast as they go in Britain). I spent the majority of my time on the train catching up on blogging and looking out the window, while my travel buddy spent most of her time sleeping. I don't know where she gets the ability to sleep at any given time, but it is truly a gift. Notable from my window watching is that the sheep population is growing rapidly as we travel north.
The train station in Edinburgh is in the center of the action, in a valley separating the old town and the new town. We walked from the station to our hotel, which is a Ibis hotel on Hunters Square, which is right on the royal mile. This is our first scrape with a corporate chain hotel in the UK. The room is nice, but they seem to charge for every little possible extra. They even have the WiFi turned down to a crawl until you pay for them to turn it up, which is a bit annoying. I'm concerned that I won't have enough bandwidth for Skyping tonight without the upgrade.
From our hotel on the 6th floor we have a good view of the mountains south of us that overlook the city. These mountains feature Arthur's Seat, the highest point in Edinburgh, which is the bump you can see behind the closer mountain. These mountains are part of Holyrood Park, which is immediately adjacent to Holyrood Palace. It's pretty cool that they have land like this set aside in the middle of their major city.
After checking in and getting settled, we ate lunch next door at a restaurant called Daft Jamie's. We each ordered a two course meal. I had a haggis dish and an scotch burger. Melissa had a lentil soup and the burger. The highlight of the meal was the haggis. More specifically, it was "Haggis, Neeps, and Tatties in a whiskey cream sauce" and it was the bomb diggity!
The scotch burgers had patties that were a bit like salty meatloaf, so we will not try them again.
Later in the day we walked down the royal mile to Holyrood Palace, the queen's official residence when she is in town. On the way we stopped and bought some Scottish souvenirs for my nephew and Melissa's sisters.
Melissa also bought a wool scarf and immediately started wearing it, as the cold combined with strong winds have made today our coldest day yet.
Once we got to Holyrood, my travel buddy shocked me and asked if I wanted to hike to Arthur's Seat. The shock was mostly because it was past 4 in the afternoon and the weather was cold and windy.
Away we went. The higher we went, the windier it got. The views of Edinburgh were spectacular, stretching all the way to the far side of the Firth of Forth (love that name btw). By the time we were up top, the wind was howling and my face was numb from the cold. Regardless of the cold, this was definitely one of the highlights of the trip so far. Full credit goes to Melissa for the idea, as I thought it was too late in the day to do this.
After descending and getting back to the a Royal Mile, we ducked into a Starbucks and shared a hazelnut macchiato, which warmed us up.
Upon returning to the hotel, we had our daily Skype and called it a day.
No comments:
Post a Comment