Today’s job was traveling from London to Edinburgh by train.
The transfer from the hotel to King’s Cross station and onto the train was pretty smooth. But just before the train left, in comes a family of four, two adults and two small children (ages four and two), to occupy the seats across the table from us designed for two people. We were riding backwards facing them. The family was from Argentina (the husband originally from Australia). They turned out to be very nice, except for the usual noise children make and the little girl kicking me whenever she was sitting on her father’s lap. The children were entirely bilingual in both Spanish and English, and extremely charming.
The parents felt a bit guilty, so they made it up to us by lending me a converter for my laptop cord and giving us the free Wi-Fi codes they had obtained good for the entire trip. (Standard fares are usually limited to only 15 minutes of free Wi-Fi.)
I must admit that I was so distracted by all the activity across the table that I did not pay as much attention to the scenery as I wanted to. Around York, we passed a lot of neat, green farmland a lot like Holland and Belgium. Later we passed the gorgeous town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, on the shores of the North Sea, and lots of castle ruins.
Edinburgh is a revelation. The immediate impression is of massive amounts of brown stone and towering heights. The history of the place is vividly evident everywhere, and I want to spend a lot more time here exploring the place and taking photographs. The shortest way out of the train station to where we were staying is a most intimidating stairway that climbs straight up and up. Instead, we dragged our bags the long way around the corner and up the incline onto Cockburn Street.
Our hotel is a huge improvement over the previous two nights—totally modern and much larger, but inside a building as old as the rest of the city. After spending some time settling in and recuperating from the sense of always being on the move, we hiked up to the next corner and the famous Royal Mile, the wide boulevard that climbs still higher to the imposing Edinburgh Castle at the top, checking out restaurants along the way. Somehow the buildings retain their sense of history despite the modern-day tourism at their feet. There are churches and statues everywhere, along with taverns and pubs, stores selling argyle and tweed, street musicians, bagpipes, tour groups, and rowdies yelling to each other down the street.
So with all the choices of places to eat, do we go with Scottish fare or choose something more familiar? We will be in Scotland for another ten days or so, so we chose Gordon’s Trattoria, for traditional Italian food and a most charming Scottish waiter who really knows how to charm the tourists.
I love this city. It is really unique among the cities we have visited, and I can’t wait to come back to experience it some more. We leave tomorrow for our Scottish rental, but we have some unplanned time in Scotland, so we just have to come back.
Photograph © 2016 P.J. Gardner. All rights reserved.