Chelsea hanging out with poet Robert Ferguson at Canongate Kirk (church) in Edinburgh.
We got up fairly early (7:30a) in York and made our way to the train station to head towards
Edinburgh. Another cold, frosty, grey morning as we walked the 20 minutes from the B&B down
past the Minster to the train station. Chelsea has learned to navigate the cities and does
quite well leading the way! Early morning York was a bustle of cars and pedistrians obviously
making their way to work.
Coffee and a pastry for breakfast from The Upper Crust - smart little coffee kiosks in the
stations and our train was right on time. Most seats on trains are now reserved and it makes
it quite easy to get a seat. The stations have signs on where to stand for what cars (lettered
A,B,C,etc.)
Chelsea slept a good bit of the way to Edinburgh and I tried to catch up on email and news
Yahoo. The trains have WiFi, but not very fast, plus I seem to have trouble connecting each
time. The train was fairly crowded with what appeared to be casual travelers going to Edinburgh
for the week-end.
We'd reserved a hostel room in Edinburgh and, while a bit expensive (twin room with shared bath was
100 GBP for 2 nights) the location is great! A 6 minute walk from the train station and a half-block
off the Royal Mile. We got checked in and decided to explore without any particular destination
in mind.
We walked a good bit of the Royal Mile searching out some lunch options and settled on baked
potatoes from a little shop on the Mile. After a filling lunch, we toward Holyrood Palace and
explored the cemetary at Canongate Kirk (kirk = church). Poet Robert Ferguson is buried there
(he was the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Burns - all Edinburgh natives.
Also buried at Canongate is Adam Smith, the economist, but we couldn't find his grave.
We'd hope to catch a free walking tour at 3:00p, got to the meeting place, but were told that
the tours were discontinued during the winter months (it was getting dark at 3:00p). We marveled
at how none of the church bells rang at exactly the same moment, and that while the bells rang
3:00p the church clock was a few minutes behind. Since there was no tour, we decided to head
back to the hostel and get off our feet for a while.
A quick cat nap in the room and then we headed out to New Town. There was a German Christmas
Fair with lots of food booths and craft vendors set up near the Walter Scott monument on Princes
Street along with carnival rides. I took some photos and Chelsea got some crepes (with banana
and nutella). We walked along Princes Street for a while and the wind was quite cold. It was
spitting rain, but none of that seemed to hamper the crowd of fair goers.
No luck with the moon this evening as there was not a bit of clear sky. We headed back to the
Royal Mile in search of a pub to get warm. We spent a couple of hours at The Filling Station
watching the football (soccer) and cricket highlights on Sky Sports and chatting. We chatted
with the bar keeps a bit as they made different drinks for patrons - a lot seemed to be having
office Christmas celebrations or maybe it was the usual TGIF!
We're planning on another day in Edinburgh tomorrow (Saturday) and bothe commented on that we
are glad that we didn't try to see everything we wanted to see here in one day! It would have
been too rushed.
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