Photos
Bags out any time from last night to before breakfast. Breakfast is 7am. Pay your bar bill which has been slipped under your door. Ours was about £9 for Clay’s 2 beers. I guess we made money by me being sick and on cold medicine and not drinking wine with dinner. Breakfast was as usual as best I remember. We definitely did not feel that we were being hustled out the door. It was a pretty calm, relaxed easy-going departure for most of the passengers as far as I could tell. The bus for the Inverness bus/train station was at 8:45am. Sadly, it was cold and rainy again this morning. Our new friends Victor & Miriam from Cornwall found us to give us their contact information and invite us to visit them in Cornwall. That was very gracious, but I am not sure whether I’ll make another transatlantic flight. (I say that and as I am posting these entries Clay is in Amsterdam via Reykjavík. Every day he has called and been all fired up about flying back to London and traveling around Europe by train. I thought we had just agreed that was a really exhausting way to travel.)
Bags out any time from last night to before breakfast. Breakfast is 7am. Pay your bar bill which has been slipped under your door. Ours was about £9 for Clay’s 2 beers. I guess we made money by me being sick and on cold medicine and not drinking wine with dinner. Breakfast was as usual as best I remember. We definitely did not feel that we were being hustled out the door. It was a pretty calm, relaxed easy-going departure for most of the passengers as far as I could tell. The bus for the Inverness bus/train station was at 8:45am. Sadly, it was cold and rainy again this morning. Our new friends Victor & Miriam from Cornwall found us to give us their contact information and invite us to visit them in Cornwall. That was very gracious, but I am not sure whether I’ll make another transatlantic flight. (I say that and as I am posting these entries Clay is in Amsterdam via Reykjavík. Every day he has called and been all fired up about flying back to London and traveling around Europe by train. I thought we had just agreed that was a really exhausting way to travel.)
We walked to the train station and just parked on a bench
for the 1 hour wait for our train. Magna Carta staff had advised us to take the
10:45am train to Edinburgh, but we could have made the 9:20am train with the
Great Rail group from the Lord of the Glens. Better safe than sorry though, I
guess.
This was another ScotRail train. We had bought our tickets
online from home and we paid £11.30pp or £22.60. We had forward facing seats this time, so that was
good. But we were in an even smaller table booth configuration which we really
don’t like. It was beautiful weather all the way to Edinburgh and it was like a
traveling postcard. I saw a red-banged cow in a field. I saw a deer without
antlers. I saw several families of pheasants. We saw cows and horses, but
mostly sheep and lambs! Everything was backed by snowcapped mountains and very
scenic.
We got to Edinburgh about 2:20pm. We got all turned around
trying to find our direction out of the Waverly Station. What is up with all
the construction and no signage? After Clay asked some man for directions, we finally
found the ibis Hotel at 6 Hunter Square just off the Royal Mile, near the
intersection with Cockburn. It was straight uphill crooked Cockburn Street that
we walked. It was about a 35 % grade. I couldn’t make it, I was wheezing and my
muscles were burning and Clay had to pull both suitcases behind him up the
hill! My hero.
This ibis Hotel was very like the one in London, so it felt
familiar. We had booked this online from home too and had prepaid for the
room. It was £83.70
for the 2 of us for one night. This room had a shower stall only instead
of a shower over tub. But, it still had the elevated floor. We checked directly
in and took the bags to the fifth floor. We’re in 501 and overlooked Hunter
Square. It was very noisy all night.
We walked up the Royal Mile to the Edinburgh Castle and paid
to tour it. It cost £16.00 for me and Clay got a Senior discount and paid £12.80.
We did the included guided tour to the top and then walked back down going in
all the buildings.
On the way up to the Castle, Clay found another Mackies of Scotland ice cream and had a cone. It was a glorious day, with bright sunshine
and about 80° F.
We left the castle about 40 minutes before they closed it
up. We headed back downhill to the ibis and looked for a place to eat. We chose
an Italian restaurant near the hotel, Bella Italia. Clay had a sausage and
pepperoni pizza that was thin and good. I had Pollo Milanese. We shared with
each other. For dessert, Clay had chocolate gelato and I had honeycomb gelato.
We walked back to the ibis and got ready for a 4:30am wake up call to get to
the airport on time in the morning.
Disaster strikes. I could not find my brown leather case that
holds my Relief Band, MotionEaze and Ear Planes for flying. I was already
worried about flying with one side of my head like a drum and deaf in the left
ear. Somehow we lost it. It is just gone. But, we spent an hour unpacking and
searching everything for it before concluding that. Tears were shed. I don’t
know how I’ll manage the transatlantic flight. I don’t even know if Relief
Bands are manufactured anymore. I am sure I had the last pocket size tube of conductivity
gel in that case. Also, even though I have a backup one at home, I don’t have any
more gel and that one is the touch control kind, not the dial kind and I don’t
like that because you can turn it on and off too easily by bumping your wrist
on something. Oh, well.
