greetings edinburgh

Today I fell in love with Edinburgh and its little cobbled streets, lack of skyscrapers and second-hand bookshops. Ok so it rained, my feet got soaked through and there were people everywhere because of the Fringe Festival, but that wouldn't happen every day. Well not the festival at least.

Edinburgh is about a 90-minute from Gretna. We arrived mid-morning and headed for the best view in the city: Scotts Monument. I have to agree with Charles Dickens' assessment of the structure in that it looks like a church tower stuck in the ground. But David said it had one of the best views so up we went. Amy stayed at ground level. It's not exactly a comfortable climb up. The staircase is incredible narrow and the way up is also the way down. Sometimes it was wide enough to allow one person to hug the centre while another squeezed by. Other times it was necessary for one person to retreat to the nearest landing (there are several viewpoints up the monument). The stairs were so tight that I felt a little lightheaded and dizzy if I went up or down at speed. I was worried that feeling would get worse at the top (I'm not great with heights) but the good Scottish air did the trick. David was right...the view was great. The old town is on one side and the new town on the other...not that's there much difference between them, except the old town is older. Duh!

View from Scott's Monument

To get a feel for the city we hop on a hop on/hop off bus. Our tour guide Graham is pretty funny and makes for a good tour. The city itself is pretty small, just a bit hilly, particularly in the old town. We do a full loop before finding somewhere for lunch. Unfortunately when we emerge from the restaurant, we're a treated to a traditional Edinburgh day...it's raining. It isn't too bad so we walk to the Grassmarket, an area in the old town that caught my eye. While David takes shelter in a record shop, Amy and I hit the second-hand book shops. When we were in New Zealand a few years ago, Mum, Dad and I found an awesome second-hand bookshop, with lots of floors and nooks and crannies. In there I found really old copies of two of A A Milne's Winnie the Pooh books. I've always thought it would be nice to complete the set. Unfortunately I can never remember which books I bought then and what year they were published. Undeterred, I fossicked through these little shops in Edinburgh and found a couple of very old ones so I bought them. I found some other treasures as well so it didn't take long for the bag to be weighed down with about seven books. I plan to leave them with Amy and I'll get them when I'm back in the UK or when she moves to Australia...whatever comes first.

My favourite bookshops

We had a bit of a drive waiting for us after Edinburgh so we tried to leave mid-afternoon. Our destination was Fort William in the Scottish Highlands. It was still about 5 when we got away so we didn't arrive at our B&B until after 8pm. The drive up was gorgeous. Scotland is exactly like the pictures. Very hilly and very green. Every now and then there is a paddock speckled with sheep, or maybe a few cows, but I didn't see much livestock and no crops. There was a quite a bit of forestry plantations though. Despite the bad weather, there were a lot of campers and caravans, and it seems you can pitch a tent anywhere because a lot of people did that too. All the kids were running around the camp site in their rain jackets and gumboots.

Wet weather fun near Fort William

Amy had a bit of trouble finding accommodation here and as we drove through the town (which runs alongside Loch Linnhe) every B&B, which accounted for pretty much every building, had a 'no vacancy' sign up.
Dinner was at a pub down the road. Since I only had a few days left in Scotland, that didn't leave much time to try haggis. I didn't really want to but figured I probably should, so I ordered it as an entree. Thankfully, it wasn't too bad. Especially when I didn't think about what was in it. It helped that I also couldn't remember, only that I knew I didn't want to know.