London & Edinburgh - Random Leftovers

Just some random leftover shots from our trip...

London Bridge is still standing. 

Classic London cool but this one smelled like pee inside. 

Notice Mark decided not to go in!

The pubs in London would get PACKED around 6 each night. Everyone would pour out onto the sidewalks with their pints and Pimms. This pub was across from our hotel. 

Ride London, a huge bicycle race, took place while we were there. We heard Saturday was pretty chaotic.  We were fortunate to avoid the chaos by going out to Notting Hill that day and then going to Book of Mormon.  Anyway, these signs made me laugh. 

Some different offerings at McDonald's

Spotted this sign on Brick Lane

Remnants of the London Wall, built by the Romans around the early 3rd century

Mark bought these EXTREMELY chocolatey cookies at Marks & Spencer, a grocery store chain. There was one right by our hotel. I don't even eat chocolate but I was obsessed with the fact that they are EXTREMELY chocolatey and kept saying it all week in London. 

While standing in line to go on the Hogwarts Express, I had Pigeon ready for his photo. Mark asked me if I was going to jump for the photo and I said I wasn't sure because I didn't want to look weird. He looked at Pigeon poking his head out of my bag and said, "Really?  You're worried about looking weird???"  Haha...

They have a Harry Potter shop at Platform 9 3/4. They have guys there to take your picture, which you can purchase in the shop, but they also help you to take your own picture, telling you how to stand and such. Mark took the pic of Pigeon and me, but here is the one we bought of both of us. 

Scott Monument, in honor of Sir Walter Scott, in Edinburgh

Baked potatoes are a big deal in Edinburgh. A lot of the restaurants had signs advertising that they had baked potatoes. 

Smallest pub in Scotland

Oldest pub in Edinburgh

Mark tried the original Czech Budweiser. 

A few more scenes of Fringe Fest

We flew home on Air France. The plane was a huge double decker!

Drinks were free!  Mark had a champagne apéritif. 

We had a great time on our trip and we would love to return to both cities one day. There is so much more to do in London!  And we'd love to use Edinburgh as a jumping off point to do the Highlands. Aah, wanderlust...

Edinburgh - Day 14 - Haggis and Irn Bru

We started our last day in Edinburgh with breakfast at Deacon's House Cafe. This is housed in what was once the workshop of Deacon Brodie. Deacon Brodie was a cabinet maker and city councillor. By day, he was an upstanding citizen, but as night fell, Brodie turned sinister and burgled his neighbors' homes. His story is said to have inspired Robert Louis Stevenson to write "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

After breakfast, we went to The Real Mary King's Close. In Edinburgh, a close is an alley that runs off from High Street (the Royal Mile). It's pronounced with a hard "s" as in, "I want to be close to you," not cloze like "Close the door."  

In the late 1600s, they decided to modernize the Old Town and built over many of the buildings and closes that were already there.  Mary King's Close is a real close that people lived on years ago. It was used as the foundation for a new building in the 1700s and closed off from access until recent years. The Real Mary King’s Close tour takes you underground to Mary King's Close, and tells you the true stories of the people who lived there 400 years ago. It was pretty interesting to see and learn about. 

Ready for a little more adventure, we went to lunch to try the national dish of Scotland - - - haggis. Haggis is the heart, liver, and lungs of a sheep ground up and mixed with spices. Years ago, it was cooked inside of a sheep's stomach, but today they make it inside of a sausage casing (due to health restrictions). 

It's traditionally served with "neeps and tatties," which are mashed turnips and mashed potatoes. Below is our tower of haggis, neeps, and tatties.  (Well, actually we had two of these...we didn't realize how much we were ordering.)

It basically tasted like hamburger mixed with spices, but there was something slightly off in the texture. It was okay as long as I didn't think about what I was eating.  Normally I would have no interest in eating such a thing but we like to try the local foods.  I don't think I would ever try it again. 

Moving on to more beautiful things, we spent some time in the afternoon wandering around. We finally went inside St. Giles Cathedral, which is on the Royal Mile. 

We found the Balmoral Hotel. This is where J.K. Rowling finished writing the Harry Potter series. She signed a statue in the room she was staying in with the following: "JK Rowling finished writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this room (552) on 11th Jan 2007".  You can now stay in the Harry Potter suite. 

We tried Irn Bru, the most popular soda in Scotland. It's marketed as having a citrus flavor, but we both thought it tasted like bubble gum!

We discovered that Lionel Richie owns the Barrace Steps sign (look closely on the right of the sign).

And we saw lots of the strange things you see in Edinburgh at festival time. 

Lepers:

Tired people (I wanted to join them):

Just wait until Mark goes back to work with this hair style:

We had dinner at Bella Italia, a UK chain. Mark had the spaghetti and meatballs and I had pasta bolognese. We both thought it was just okay...but it was comfort food. 

Throughout dinner, we were fascinated by the drippy candle on our table. (Are we getting bored?)  For some reason, our candle was burning much faster than anyone else's. The whole candle had burned down before we even finished dinner!

Going...

Going...

Gone!

For anyone who is actually still reading after that crazy candle business...

After dinner we went to a Fringe comedy show at the Beehive Inn. The comedian was Viv Gee and her act was "Age Against the Machine."  It was funny, but Viv is Scottish and it was a little hard to understand her sometimes. 

We're back at the hotel enjoying our nightly ritual of wine (Mark) and tea (me). We head home tomorrow via a long day of travel --> Edinburgh to Paris to NY to Rochester. Oh, joy...  

Mark would like to be on vacation forever. 

Edinburgh - Day 13 - Finding Wonder

We started out our day by having breakfast at The Elephant House. You might remember that this is where J.K. Rowling did much of the writing of the early Harry Potter books. It's a nice cafe, and other than advertising themselves as the birthplace of Harry Potter, they don't try to capitalize on it. Mark had sausage and cheese on a morning roll and a cappuccino. I had a ham and cheese croissant.

Pigeon had an orange juice. 

(Commentary from Mark: We are perfectly normal...right?!) 

After breakfast, I went to check out the Book Festival. There weren't any publishers or vendors, but there were a lot of speakers and signings. I was there just in time to meet R.J. Palacio and have her sign a copy of "Wonder" for me. This was one of the best middle grade books of last year so I was excited.  I didn't want to ask her for a picture so I took one surreptitiously!  

We had a Fringe show to go to at 2:15, so we headed over to the venue a little early to get lunch. We each had a minute steak sandwich and split some haggis chips!  I thought they tasted like hot dogs, but Mark liked them.  (More from Mark:  They were like a strange sort of barbeque.)

The show we went to was a musical called "Assassins."  I think I must have known at some point that it was a musical, but when I told Mark about the show I had completely forgotten. After we bought the tickets, I realized again that it was a musical. Mark was a good sport about it. 

Assassins is about nine men and women who have attempted to assassinate United States presidents through the years. It examines their motives and commonalities. While the overarching feel of the show is dark, there is quite a bit of humor in it, as well. The acting was fantastic and we both ended up liking the show. 

After the show, we finally went to visit the castle. We went on a short guided tour and then explored a little on our own. We saw the Scottish Crown Jewels and the Stone of Destiny.  I had trouble keeping Mark from standing atop the Stone of Destiny for what he called his "coronation."  But the security guards helped me out.

After the castle, we went to a pub in the Grassmarket for a little while. Then we went over to Rose Street for dinner. We ended up at a place called the Mussel Inn. There were people lined up waiting...so we figured that was a good sign. 

We waited about 15 minutes for a table. We decided to each get Caesar salads and split the peri peri shrimp skewer for starters. For the main course, we both had pots of mussels. Mark had Moroccan style and I had shallot. We both thought the mussels were great. We would go to this place regularly if it were in Rochester. 

We ended our evening back at the hotel relaxing in the Peacock Lounge.

Postscript from Mark:  I've been meaning to mention this and keep forgetting.  Today, I again saw a blue umbrella in Princes Street Garden (there is an exhibit with about a dozen of them). Why does that matter?  It's the beginning line of a Fish (from Marillion) song about Scottish independence, called Internal Exile.  So, for me, that kind of stuff matters...just like seeing the Heart of Lothian, going to Belsize Park, having Karen buy me sugar mice...you get the point if you research Marillion.  Imagine what I'm like in Chicago, where Styx was formed?  Anyway, while I'm convinced that this kind of stuff makes me cool...Karen isn't quite as sure.  Pigeon, however, asserts that this is the ultimate sign of being cool.  Perhaps we have been on vacation too long when we are consulting a stuffed pigeon for...well...for anything!