Day 4: Edinburgh to London

We made our last breakfast in Edinburgh of sausage, eggs, and raspberries with coffee and packed up our bags to leave our lovely little flat. If you're ever in Edinburgh, I highly recommend where we stayed- super close to The Royal Mile, nice big space, with nice furnishings. We walked up to our bus stop to take a bus from downtown to the northside of the city to worship with the local brethren. We found out that the bus only takes exact change or a prepaid pass and when we tried to purchase one yesterday, the office was closed. Joel thought it closed at 7:30, but it was 17:30 (5:30). They use military time here so it can be very confusing and makes you second guess everything. We decided to get some currency exchanged instead and when we went to our stop, the bus was 30 minutes early because Sundays are unpredictable. We made it to the building and waited until an old man named Dave came and opened it and he told us classes were cancelled because so many people are on holiday so we talked for an hour learning about his life and telling him about ours until everyone else came for worship. It was a fairly typical worship just with a Scottish flair and some liberal leanings. We met several people but needed to make our way back into town to catch our train into London when a nice lady with a funny accent offered us a ride to Waverly Station. We got in her SUV with her 2 kids and found out she was from Tennessee so her accent was funny because it was a mixture of southern and Scottish since her husband is Scottish and she has lived here for 14 years. Her kids have a very mellow Scottish accent and sound American to other kids apparently. Found out we both have family in Hendersonville, TN. Small world! It was really nice to hear her perspective on travel, Scotland, and that the lure of living in a fairytale town dies away. Something I love about traveling is learning to appreciate the life you already have back home. Simple luxuries like being able to run the oven and iron your clothes without blowing a fuse (which we did) or own 2 cars or have a dryer dry your clothes (apparently a dryer is a fire hazard in these old buildings and many can't have them). So anyways... things I love about Edinburgh: the mixture of medieval, georgian, and modern architecture, the rich history, the friendly people, and the super lush landscape. Things I dislike: too many tourists on the main drags, the bus system, the amount of young smokers in the city with really poor choices in clothing and an awful lot of alcohol seems to be drunk. Once Joy dropped us off, we grabbed some lunch and a coffee and went to platform 19 and 3/4 (ok, just 19) to board our virgin train to London's Kings Cross Station. It's pretty comfortable and I would take a train any day over a plane. It's about 4 hours down the east coast of England with great views of the ocean and the countryside. Joel spent his time journaling and reading (an actual ebook) and I watched the country and villages pass by. Once we got into King's Cross, we made our way out the enormous station into a very international city. Our flat was literally across the street in what seems like a pretty nice area with other botique hotels nearby. As any large city, 1 street can make an enormous difference in how nice an area is. Our flat is significantly smaller with far less stuff provided to you but it's clean, quiet, and a great location. You can't ask for any more in London this time of year. The low exchange rate is helping quite a lot, but it's still extremely expensive, far more expensive than Paris. Speaking of which, after grabbing groceries (which are hard to find - I guess everyone eats out for all their meals) and purchasing our tube oyster passes, we settled in, made dinner, and watched the Euro Soccer game France against Portugal. Glad we're not going to Paris until next week.Read more