Train Tickets and the Royal Mile

Needing transportation to Fort William and beyond, we stopped at Waverly station to get tickets. I remember the Scots as having a reputation of being frugal, and our ticket agent did not disappoint us. He suggested a rail pass that would meet our needs, but we would be required to have passport style pictures of ourselves for the pass identification. Further he suggested that we could save some money on the pictures by going to the photo booth outside Marks and Spencers and quickly switch places while it was taking our photos. We both loved the idea of saving some money while performing a Chinese fire drill in the photo booth. This particular booth is more complicated than I remember them being. There is an array of options to choose from and we ended up doing the seat changing fire drill, but spending more than twice what we wanted and having about 11 non flattering pictures of ourselves. One was portrait size of a very stern looking Dianne. I see the humour in it now but nobody was smiling then. The ticket agent was amused.

The royal mile is just around the corner of our hotel. We walked down the hill to Holyrood Palace, stopping in every Christmas store and walked back up the hill towards Edinburgh Castle stopping in every Christmas store we missed on the way down. Mostly Dianne is a browser when it comes to shopping at the stores. I want to buy from the first shop we go into so we can stop looking. We compromised by getting a coffee around halfway.Read more