Farewell to Scottish soil

In the last blog we left you in Edinburgh where we’d been pissing it up and enjoying our time on the town. It didn‘t really change that much really – we continued to find the yummiest restaurants in town – recommended to us by the very cute boy, I (Dan) thought, working the reception desk – and discovering the town on our own terms.

We spent the day on Monday walking up Princes St which is the major shopping street in Edinburgh and wandered around just soaking up the atmosphere with a spot of shopping here and there before doing the dinner and jazz thing as Gareth mentioned in the previous entry.

I must say the jazz bar was very cool – a 17 piece band including 4 tubas, saxes, bass, piano, and 4 boys (one of them a hottie) blowing their horns. A nice bottle of red and a good night had by all.
Yesterday we started the day at Holyrood House –the Queen’s residence in Edinburgh.

Very interesting slice of history about Mary Queen of Scots and her lot and then continued our walk along the Royal Mile. We had lunch at a beautiful restaurant with the suited lunch crowd and then checked out Edinburgh Castle, where I bought some very tasty Honey Mead, before making our way back down the mile to the recommended Fudge shop for our afternoon serving of sugary goodness washed down with Belgian hot chocolate. Mmmm. I do like me some fudge! After making friends with a patch of daffodils (they grow wild everywhere),

we had a quiet night for a change as we wanted to get up early to walk up Arthur’s Seat, a mountainy look-outy thingo overlooking the city to take some photos of Edinburgh Castle and the city, basking in the early morning light.

Yes, well that was the intended plan anyway. 6.15am and up the mountain we went to face icy temps and buffeting winds only to find the early morning light we were seeking was hiding behind a thick blanket of cloud and broke through for only minutes at a time. After sitting it out for a while, we gave it up as a nice idea that would not come to fruition and headed back for brekkie, one more chat with the hotel cutie and then off to England we went!

The ordinary weather turned respectably foul as we left Scottish soil and ventured into Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, to sheets of driving rain and bad luck with our pub grub lunch. Just 1 min after arriving and securing our table they decided to stop taking orders as they were too busy. Really. Those of you who known how patient I am with bad service can imagine how happy I was with that turn of events. Off to Maccas, back to the car and another few hours of driving ahead of us before stopping at Durham Cathedral (only because they filmed part of Harry Potter there, what part though, we couldn’t figure out!)

and then stopping at the lovely town of York for the night. A little trouble finding accommodation but after a little bit of searching, we managed to find a place for only 73 pounds (about $180) which was quite good, compared to the other place we found that was available for 169 pounds (about $420) for the night. What else was there to do then, but head to the pub for a meal and watch the Manchester United vs Barcelona football (soccer) game whilst sucking down some schooners of beer and scratching ourselves. Actually, I drank the finest red wine they had to offer, but that isn’t as good a story. And there wasn’t any scratching. At least not by me.

We have added to the things we have learnt along the way though. Today we learnt that:

• Even in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun still goes from East to West


• When it says “No Photos allowed” that means even when you don’t have the flash turned on!


• The English like their witch’s hats. Even when they might only need a dozen or so to mark an area on a highway, they are only happy with using every single one no less than eleventy billion.


• I may actually like soccer!

Observations:

As we go further south, the mountainous landscape has given way to flat meadows and there are no more big hairy coos, much to my dismay!

What is nice though, are the huge paddocks full of heather which are really beautiful.