Edinburgh, My New Love

All concerns about the train booking mix up were dispelled as soon as we pulled into the Edinburgh train station.  This was the European city I had been dreaming about when planning out the trip and we were going to do it right.   Forgoing the expensive cabs, we managed to find and take the correct bus, thanks to the friendly bus drivers of lines 9, 38 and 37 and arrived out our B&B in the pitch dark just before 5pm. 

Our only plans for our two night stay were the dinner reservations we had for that night at The Honours compliments of Martin’s friends as a wedding present.  With the reservations not until 8, we took the opportunity to wander around Prince Street and take in our first few moments of Scotland.

Perfectly situated, our hotel was only a short walk to the city center and along the way we passed a really cute restaurant that looked delicious.  We stopped to check out the menu for dinner the next night only to realize we were in fact eating there that night (it was The Honours!...Martin’s friends did real good).    After a stroll through the pedestrian streets, we sat down at the restaurant bar for a pre-dinner drink before getting seated for the main affair.  Dinner, enjoyed shortly thereafter was fantastic, with a beautiful cut of steak, creamed spinach, yummy salad, artichoke risotto (not too crunchy) and onion rings and duck fat potatoes as sides.  Completely full, we made our way back to the hotel for a sound night’s sleep.

The next morning, we started the day off right with a full English breakfast and some serious sightseeing which took us through the rest of the day.   We saw and did it all!  We went up to the castle, past the church, down through Grass Market (where I bought a cute painting at the fantastic Red Door Gallery and we perused the vintage clothing at Armstrongs), over to Arthur’s Seat (where we made it only halfway up, thanks in part to my city boots and cute white jacket I didn’t want to muddy) and finally back to Prince Street for the final hot lap. 

With dark approaching around 4pm, we grabbed our books from the hotel and headed to the local Stockbridge Pub for an afternoon of beers and reading on the couch by the fire…it could have been home….except it was a bar, which is way better….  America needs more pubs!  The pub we were at lacked a full kitchen so we headed next door to another pub for dinner.    Dinner turned into Pub Trivia, where we competed against 17 other teams and came in 15…I call it a win.  We did learn a few interesting fun facts in the process including: the names of the two most recent popes, who the CEO of Motorola called on the first cell phone call (his rival of course) and the color of the world’s most expensive diamond (pink, go figure). 

The night, and ultimately our stay in Edinburgh ended with rain, so we were not too disappointed when we left the following morning for the country side of Inverness and the Hogmanay celebrations.  And true to most European cities, I left completely in love…Edinburgh is a fantastic, more manageable London, with all of the great restaurants, fun bars and nice people without  the effort to get across town.