June Adventures-Part 4

 

Day 8:  After a leisurely morning and scrumptious breakfast, we took a drive to the airport for our Easy Jet quick flight to Edinburgh.  Once we checked our luggage we made our way to the departing gate which was down a flight of stairs to two gates, where there was no one, and I mean no one there at either gate.  No people in line, no gate attendant, the place was empty.  It remained empty until literally the time we were supposed be departing.  A flight attendant from the other gate, which was empty, finally came over to talk to someone on the phone at our gate to see if he should begin to check us in. 

Finally, another attendant arrived and began scanning our tickets and we began to move past the attendant to another area beyond the gate, but not out to the plane yet.  We all just crammed in another area beyond the que at the gate until finally we were able to board the plane.  We had assigned seats across the aisle from each other-3 on 1 side, 1 across. Leah and I went to do our normal wipe down of my seating area and the seat trays were full of crumbs, ketchup stains etc.  We just closed the trays-figuring we weren’t eating on the plane anyway.  The onboard safety training was quite amusing and the of us tried to suppress our giggles. 

The flight was very short & we arrived in Edinburgh only 10 minutes late.  We met our driver at luggage claim and he escorted us to our last hotel for the duration of our trip.  The drive from the airport to the hotel at first was uneventful and the scenery nothing special. But then, we crest a hill and come into a fairytale.  The buildings in parts of Edinburgh date back to the 1400’s and oh my how impressive this town is.  After we arrived at our hotel in the heart of the oldest area of Edinburgh, we settled in to our rooms and then prepared for our first tour, a ghostly underground tour of the Blair street underground vaults in Edinburgh.  We met our tour guide and other tourists for the tour a few short blocks away.  Our tour guide was very animated and did a wonderful presentation about the history of Edinburgh and the Blair underground vaults that we visited.

After our tour, we explored other areas of Edinburgh on our own and remained out and about until well past 9:00 pm since it was still so light out. 

Day 8:  We had a relaxing morning and light breakfast in preparation for our Food Safari of Edinburgh in the new town area which happens to have been built during the 1700’s.  We met our Food Safari tour guide-Nell at Tigerlilly,  a great little cocktail bar with tasty eats.  There we tried their special Scottish cocktail with Gin, Prosecco and candy floss, and they also served a non-alcoholic version to those not desiring alcohol.  The canapes were Scottish smoked salmon with local maker Katy Rodger cream cheese and sweet potato bhajis.  Both were very tasty.  After enjoying this venue, we took a leisure stroll to our next destination: The Bailie.

The Bailie has been a bar since the 1870’s. It was definitely a  locals bar and Nell assured us to this day there are still many regulars drinking in the bar who first started drinking it in the 1950’s and 60’s. The restaurant serves local seasonal popular food – we had meat haggis with mash and peppercorn sauce and veggie haggis with sweet chilli sauce and turnip.  3 of us order the veggies version & Leah was the adventurous one.  However 2 of us did try some of Leah’s and preferred it over our veggie version so we kept snitching some of hers.

After we finished here, we explored more of the new town streets and made our way to a local cheese shop-Mellis Cheese Shop.  This shop has Scottish cheese tasting from high quality farmhouse cheeses many often handmade for both the retail and wholesale sector. We enjoyed samples of isle of Mull cheddar–aged for 18 months on the Isle of Mull and Bonnet – hard goats cheese from Ayrshire.

Our last stop after some more walking and listening to Nell’ history of Edinburgh and the story of how she came to run the Food Safari, was  to finally have some tea-which surprisingly we never did find the time to do while in England.  We converged at The Raeburn House Hotel. The Raeburn was built in 1832 as an elegant Georgian family home and has now been transformed into an exquisite boutique hotel, bar, dining, and library.  We enjoyed tea, coffee scones and jam.

After departing from the wonderful tea room, we did a little thrift store shopping and found some great finds.  We made our way back to the hotel for a short rest and the head to Scott’s restaurant for dinner that evening, followed  by more exploring until well after 9:00 pm.

Day 9: This morning we navigated our way to the rail station where we took a train ride to Glasgow to meet our tour guide, Tom, for our Art walk tour.  Tom is an established photographer so Leah was able to get advice and tips on photography as we walked around different sites in Glasgow.  This journey ended at the rail station where we boarded a train back to Edinburgh.  Upon arrival we walked back to our hotel, had a short rest and then we were out and about on the streets of Edinburgh taking it all in before our last tour of the trip the following day.

Day 10:  We met our driver/guide-Peter (not the same one as our Jane Austen tour to Bath) in front of the hotel and he took us to tour 2 castles and Rosslyn Chapel-which is featured in The Da Vinci Code.  Our first stop was the Rosslyn Chapel.  This chapel was founded in 1446 the ancient architecture and style  was another reminder of how much incredible craftsmanship went into the historic buildings and thankfully modern techniques to preserve the integrity.

After this visit, we made our way to Blackness Castle, a 15^th century castle, and has appeared in the TV show the Outlander.  We toured the castle which was mostly a garrison fortress and state prison where “higher” nobility criminals were housed. 

After this castle we had a quick bite to eat and then headed to the grand finale-Sterling Castle.  The first written records of the castle dates back to 1107 when Alexander the I endows a chapel.  The castle was handed off in 1174 from King Henry the II as part of the ransom for William the Lion and the history of this castle ownership between England & Scotland has been back and forth for centuries until the unification in 1707.  The castle had actors portraying historical hand maids etc. during this time and it was an incredible experience getting to self-tour and also interact with these characters that portrayed their roles well.  On our way back to the hotel

On our way back to the hotel, Peter made a pitstop for us to go check out The Kelpies.

After our day touring the castles and countryside of Scotland, we reluctantly made our way to to our last night in Edinburgh and made the most of it by exploring new and old areas of the town, and having a final celebratory drink in a gorgeous old bank-turned restaurant and bar called The Dome,  before retreating to our hotel to pack of for our voyage home.

And that folks, was just the beginning of our summer.