After packing up, driving two hours and dropping the car back to its owners Thrifty in Wolverhampton, we hopped on the train and headed north to Edinburgh. The train was a bit squishy and quite warm, and although the booking page had assured us we were booking two window seats facing each other over a table, in reality we had two window seats one behind the other. We nabbed one of the aisle seats so we could sit together, and I sat there holding my breath at each stop waiting for someone to tell me that was their seat, as people seemed to be doing at every other seat!
We arrived at Waverley Station as it was raining (of course) so we hailed a taxi to take us the short drive to the hotel. We’re staying at one of the Holiday Inn Expresses, and it’s very boring and anonymous, but still it’s kind of nice to be in somewhere boring after all the “character” hotels we’ve stayed at! The outside is lovely anyway, as the building is an “historic” one. There was a moment of panic on check-in, as they couldn’t find our reservation, which I had dutifully carried out on their website, and prepaid! Thank goodness I had the reservation confirmation with me, as apparently their reservations department hadn’t passed it on. Only eight months of notice, thanks guys! We managed to get a room at least, and they gave us a drinks voucher, which was nice.
As we were settling in, there was some noise out on the street, and noticed they’d put on fireworks, obviously to welcome us to town. Yay!
There are the occasional creaky “character” floorboards we’ve come to expect, and breakfast is a bunfight (almost literally) as there is nowhere near enough space for everyone booked into the hotel to eat breakfast. Wonderful shower though – awesome pressure and nice and hot.
After checking in we wandered out into the chilly evening to find some food. I was craving something not hearty or traditionally British or Moroccan after the huge servings of meat we’ve been having so far on this holiday, so we were looking for Thai or Chinese or something similar. We found the No. 1 Chinese Restaurant a couple of blocks from the hotel, and set on combination stir fry with gusto! Yay for crunchy vegies!
This morning after the breakfast skirmish, we wandered around to the Royal Mile. Because it’s New Year’s Eve, there were thousands of tourists wandering around. We walked up to Edinburgh Castle, but were put off by the huge crowds.
We had a look in some of the souvenir shops, and contemplated tartans, but R already has a traditional kilt from his last trip, and my family doesn’t seem to have any affiliations. I’ll pick up a few souvenirs before we leave though. We did see dog kilts, which would be a hoot next Christmas on the family doggies, but the largest size they had as for Scottish Terriers, and all our dogs are much bigger than that!
After wandering down the Royal Mile to see Holyrood Palace, we started walking up it again in search of lunch.
After popping into a whisky shop to R could taste a couple of new and different expressions (the shop had a resident dog, Maggie), we ended up stopping at the oldest pub on the Royal Mile, which was first opened in 1740-something. Not bad! Unsurprisingly, they had some “traditional” Scottish food, so R had a lamb hotpot, and I explored the “Stovies” – basically potato and beef, mashed together. Imagine cottage pie mooshed. Tasted pretty good, but bland and salty at the same time.
After lunch we wended our way through the ever-increasing crowds, through a shopping centre (and over a scarily see-through pedestrian bridge – my fear of heights was on full alert!) and back to the hotel to prepare for our Hogmanay evening.
Two Weeks Away 