Gretna

And we finally made it to Scotland. The drive up the M6 and then cutting over on the small two lane road to Edinburgh was beautiful! While not nearly as tight as the road in Keswick had been, the 60 mph speed limit with large trucks was a little surprising and rarely reached. There was beautiful green country side, small towns, plenty of sheep for Taylor to ooh and aah at (she really wants to be Bo Peep!), and offered a renewed vigor to my beaten down, old body! I feel I’ve done a pretty good job on the roads. The biggest trick is to always have someone you can follow (fingers crossed they aren’t a bloody American like you) and then just drive. That worked rather well until we got into Edinburgh. I’ve managed to avoid a lot of the big cities and for good reason. As we made our way to our hotel - once again, so glad we upgraded cars and got the nice navigation system, she’s been huge and she interrupts Tay’s music and annoys her (just an added bonus for me) - the roads of course became tighter and filled with busses. As we approached our hotel near the city center, it was on the opposite side. I already knew they didn’t have parking and we’d have to pull along the curb to unload before parking, but I couldn’t get there from my side of the road. So we went past and started following the new route to work ourselves back around. As we came to an awkward intersection, within view of the hotel and just before turning onto the busy four lane road across the train station - it happened. I was first in line at a light, in the right lane to make a right turn. But I only had about 100 feet to then make a left turn and I had someone on my left. With no one in front of me, and worried about the guy next to me, I did it, I pulled the ultimate Clark Griswold move and turned into the right lane - into the oncoming traffic just leaving their light!!! Well, as I slowly made my way between oncoming cars on either side of me, trying to get back to the right lane (meaning left side of the road!!), the ladies in my car were all quite calm as they couldn’t scream with their souls already halfway out of the car. Somehow, and probably due to the fact this wasn’t the first time these drivers had to deal with a foreigner doing this, I managed to weave my way over, get in front of the truck that was behind me and now patiently sat chuckling, waiting for me to find my way into the left lane. A couple minutes later, we were parked in front of the hotel, the ladies all bolted, and I got to sit in retrospective thought in the car. Yeah, it’s time to park this car and spend some time in one place! HELLO EDINBURGH!!!

Day 1 Edinburgh- After staying in some cool little B&B’s we check into the Hilton on the Royal Mile. The accommodations on the trip have varied greatly, and have been fun to experience. Driving into the city center of Edinburgh has been eventful and we all decide to put our things in the room and take a deep breath. Since it’s always a crap shoot on whether we’ve had lunch that day we decide to scope out a place to eat. There are tons of restaurants near the hotel, so we scoped out a pub and told the girls we would meet them there, I’ve noticed a few interesting things about eating over here.

* One, the kitchens stop serving food surprisingly early compared to the states and Spain- (KK told us her normal dinner time was 10:30pm!) **Two, almost all the tables throughout our travels in pubs or restaurants had a designated table #. If you ordered at the bar or with a waiter/waitress your table # was always displayed or referenced in some form or fashion.
***Three, they won’t take your order until everyone in your party is seated with you. This posed a problem our first night when Taylor decided to take a “quick shower” before dinner. We were so excited for her to actually shower we said go for it and we’d meet the girls at the restaurant around the corner. We had to do some fast talking to even be seated in the restaurant section, and then again to order drinks before the rest of our party was seated. We finally got some pints and the waiter desperately wanted to take our order because the kitchen was closing, but the girls hadn’t arrived yet. Nearly a pint in the waiter was getting antsy and wouldn’t take any appetizer or dinner orders until everyone had arrived. We were getting worried they were going to ask us to leave if the girls didn’t get there soon, but 45 mins after Taylor announced she was taking her quick shower the girls arrived.
****Four, your entire order has to be put in at once, no ordering appetizers first and then dinner.
*****Five, they do not clean away any plates until everyone is finished and the check has been payed.
******Six, no additional tips are expected.
*******Seven, if you pay with a credit card they bring the card machine to your table and most patrons utilize a tap and pay system vs the chip and pin credit card we use in the US.

Dinner was yummy, the sticky toffee pudding was to die for, and the king size bed in the Hilton was really comfortable.Read more