Edinburgh Day 1 - June 30, 2009

We arrived in Edinburgh around 10:30 GMT. For some reason I think it is really cool to be in Greenwich Mean Time. Both flights went really well – thanks to Todd for sneaking out of work and delivering us to the airport. Here is a funny story from MSP International – we check in, get our boarding passes and I asked Beth (who had the boarding passes) where we are off to. I think I hear her say B-9, so I make a joke about the tumor not being cancerous (it was benign . . .), she chuckles and says wrong gate, it is E-9. Good try Taber, off we go. So what gate do we walk to? You guessed it B-9, which was at the opposite end of the airport from where we needed to be.

We had emergency row seating out of Minneapolis and into Newark. We arrived early in Newark and got a snack, listened to more news blather about Michael Jackson and watched people. The flight out of Newark was delayed because of an electrical problem, but they found another plane, reassigned us to another gate and we were in the air around 10:30 with a pretty full plane. We lucked out on two fronts, emergency row seating again and Beth (who was in the love seat) was sitting next to a very nice man who lives outside of Edinburgh. He was wonderful and helped us learn how to speak Scottish and understand the accent – we learned that the fog that is pushed in on Edinburgh from the Forth of Furth is called a “haar”, imagine you live in the northeast (like Maine) and pronounce it with a downeast accent and a British accent and you’ll come close. I also learned that the word Gaelic sounds a lot more like garlic with a soft “r”.

We took the bus from the Edinburgh airport to the City Center and decided to walk from there to the Bed and Breakfast (14 Hart Street - see the picture). It would have been a relatively short walk had we gone the right way, but we took a wrong turn and ended up off the beaten path. We got turned around, met Betty the housekeeper, dropped off out bags and headed back out. As we were leaving we met James who owns the house and was home early because he and his wife were going to Garden Party. At the time we had no idea what this meant, but now we’re a little wiser. We walked back to where we had been dropped off and took a Tour Edinburgh Tour bus. We bought the “ride any of the 4 buses for 24 hours pass”. The tour bus was a good way to get oriented to Edinburgh and see some of the touristy sites we had planned to visit.

During the bus tour we learned more about the Garden Party. Apparently the Queen has come to visit (is it because we are here – we’ll never know as she was very busy!). The tour was slowed down and detoured because all of the foot and vehicle traffic going to Holyrood House, the Queen’s home in Scotland. Out tour guide advised to watch for all the skirt and wonderful hats and watch the ladies too! We saw lots kilts and the ladies were also looking very nice with lots of “I can’t see the movie hats”.

After dining at a local establishment, called the Urban Angel, we headed back out on our feet, took another tour bus ride (taking full advantage of the 24 hour pass) and went on a different route. This route was a little less interesting and there was no tour guide - it was a pre-recorded message. We got to see the Britannia, but we were ready for the tour to be over and then we went back to Urban Angel and got some chocolate, raspberry cake for "take away." We enjoyed the cake in our lovely B&B room; while we struggled with the computer. At about 8pm we gave up on the laptop and turned in for the night.