The Grand Tour (Day 1 & 2): Travel to...and Edinburgh

When we were close to getting engaged, Becky and her sister Marnie went on a tour to Europe.  She came back and told me all of the stories of her trip and it sparked an interest in travelling to Europe.  We even watched a video tape (yes, it was back in those days) of the Louvre museum in Paris that she checked out of the county library.  We've joked for years about the fact that the video tape showed most of the people walking around carrying their shoes because their feet were tired from spending the entire day at the museum.  We've talked about "going to Europe together" as some future thing that we wanted to do some day and I wanted to do it for some kind of special occasion.  I had always pegged our 25th anniversary as the target, because way back then, that seemed so far away....and by then, we would certainly be rich!

It didn't exactly work out that way, but about 18 months ago, I started dreaming and exploring. After receiving a notice that all of our frequent flyer miles we had accumulated from our Massachusetts years were being consolidated into a new program in a merger between United and Continental, I started worrying about losing the value of the miles or the miles expiring altogether.  So I started wondering if we could swing a trip if we had free airfare.  I checked into it, and started planning, and the result was a 20-day swing through Europe seeing as many of the major highlights as we possibly could.

The benefit of planning a year in advance, is that you can secure hard-to-get reward tickets using miles...something that became very clear as I continued to check for better flights as the date approached.  (It never happened....in fact, there were fewer and fewer reward flights.  Probably because of the upcoming Olympic games in London.)  Another benefit of planning a year in advance is that you can get some awesome prices on hotel rooms that get much more expensive closer in and you're able to book tours of museums and historic sites that are on limited availability (e.g. night visit to the Vatican Museums, an underground tour of the Colloseum, and tickets to the Ceremony of Keys at the Tower of London).

It didn't take much to convince Becky.  Europe?  Castles?  Renaissance? She's there.

So we left the kids in their own capable hands (well, mostly Sara's) and left Salt Lake City on Tuesday, June 19th.  We flew a Houston>Newark>Edinburgh route.  Airplane travel sounds really exciting....probably because you arrive at exotic destinations.  But the reality is that it really stinks.  I don't know if I've gotten bigger, or the seats have gotten smaller, but I felt some serious claustrophobia!  And while an overnight flight sounds doable, the reality is that its very difficult to sleep in such cramped quarters.  And while it was fortuitous that our seatmate's video console broke down and she requested to be moved (giving us the 3 seats to ourselves), a "medical emergency" on the plane triggered an announcement from the pilot asking for trained medical personnel and waking everyone up, then watching all of them try to treat an elderly woman who appeared to have something very minor.  But it ended up waking me up and was difficult to catch any sleep.

The one thing we found that made the trip a little more enjoyable was having some "privileges" with the airline.  About a year ago when I started planning our trip, I read some articles that talked about the benefits of credit cards sponsored by Airlines and that you can get better reward availability if you are a card holder. So I got the card.  And in addition to better booking options, we got "Priority Boarding" at all airports, free bags (which essentially would pay for the card membership if it hadn't been free for the first year), and visits to the United Club in the airport terminals.  In Salt Lake, we arrived at 5:30 am thinking we would be the first people there.  But in reality, several hundred people were moving through the security lines at a snails pace.  We were given priority passes to bypass all of that and go right to the front of the line.  When the planes were boarding, we were given first access to find convenient places for luggage in the overhead bins, etc.  (I wasn't sure that was really a benefit....it meant you were on the plane for longer...until I saw people trying to jockey to get bins near their seats and how difficult that became.)   But the biggest perk was going into the United Club at Newark airport.  Oversized leather chairs, snacks and drinks, magazines, free wi-fi, showers, clean restrooms, etc.  It was a perfect and relaxing way to kill a couple of hours waiting for our next flight.

After the overnight flight, we arrived at Edinburgh about 9:30 am, went through immigration and customs, grabbed our bags and hopped on a bus to Edinburgh.  The bus dropped us off in front of the main station and we walked up the hill to the our hotel at the top of "The News Steps".

This is only half of the steps.  And try carrying two suitcases and two carry on bags after 19 hours of uncomfortable airplanes and airports!  It was a hike!

I captured this aerial of Edinburgh before we left.  The castle is the large structure to the left of the photo and our hotel is where the red dot is.

Our hotel room wasn't ready when we arrived, so we set out exploring the The Royal Mile just a half block from our hotel.  The street is the mile-long royal promenade between Holyood Palace (the Queen's official Scottish palace) and Edinburgh Castle.  There is some fascinating history here at every turn (and most of it, I'm sure, we are oblivious to).  But the architecture is fantastic.  5 and 6-story row houses line the street with some fantastic gothic detailing on some buildings.  This section of Edinburgh is "Old Town" and is the location of the medieval city and up until the 1700's was the only section of the City...crammed with people living in every nook and cranny and underground hallway they could find.  It was disease-ridden with everyone crammed in, so the wealthy built a "New Town down across the valley in Georgian style architecture and a very well-planned city with parks and squares.  Its an interesting contrast.  But Becky and I both commented that we both liked the medieval feel of "Old Town" much better.  (At least now that its cleaned up and has touristy kilt shops everywhere).

The Royal Mile

St. Giles Kirk (Church) across the street from our Hotel

Sadly, my point of reference for this stuff is "Wow, this looks like Disneyland!"

A street piper and a protestor on a street corner

The Georgian-style streets of "New Town"

Between all of the buildings in Old Town, there are "closes" or small pathways that lead to areas behind the buildings.  The medieval buildings were crammed in so tightly that instead of roads, the primary way to get around was walking through the "closes".

We walked around town for a bit, then bought some passes for tickets to the hop-on, hop-off buses that drive you around the city showing the major points of interest, and stopping in locations where you can hop-off and explore on your own.

We ended up at Edinburgh Castle in the afternoon.  We took a short guided tour giving an overview, then walked back through each of the buildings.  We saw the Grand Hall (for banquets and ceremonies) which has a fantastic hammer beam ceiling structure, the Royal Palace where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to her son James, the crown jewels, the Stone of Scone (very fascinating to me since we watched a netflix movie called "Stone of Destinty" talking about how some Scottish college students in 1950 stole the stone from Westminster Abbey in London and smuggled it back to Scotland. We saw the prisons where American prisoners from the Revolutionary War were held (and they have the prison doors on display that have carvings of the american flag carved by american prisoners), and St. Margarets Church....the oldest building on the castle grounds and dates back to before the 1300s.

The South face of the Castle

William Wallace at the entrance to the Castle

Architectural detailing above the main castle gate

Our tour guide.  She had a cute Scottish accent.

Detailing on the Royal Palace

Hammerbeam Ceiling of the Great Hall

Door to the Great Hall (Becky wants a door like this)

Scottish War Memorial

St. Margarets Chapel (from the 13th Century)

I took this for Daniel.  Its one of the warning cauldrons along the castle wall.   Very much like Lord of the Rings!  They were filled with wood and ready to light to warn people below of trouble

Entrance to the Scottish War Memorial

Back side of the royal palace.  You can tell its the Royal Palace because of the gold-leaf reliefs

View over Edinburgh from one of the cannons

Becky in the Portcullis gate.  Partly because we thought it was a cool gate and wanted a picture and partly because it had started drizzling.

Victoria Street in Edinburgh where I got my Haggis sandwich.

Very fascinating sites! I love to see the detailing on the buildings and wonder how they were able to build some of these buildings over 700 years ago!

It started a light drizzle in the late afternoon as we left the castle, and we were so tired and feeling dirty after 48 hours of no showers, so we picked up some takeout from a local restaurant called "Oink", featuring pulled pork sandwiches with Haggis with chile relish or "Sage and Onion" stuffing (just like our stuffing) and applesauce.  I had the haggis version, Becky had the stuffing version.  I actually kind of liked the Haggis on the sandwich.

Our hotel room

We walked back to our hotel, ate our sandwiches, showered and collapsed on the bed.  Unfortunately, its now 4 am (local time) and I'm wide awake.  Which is why you are getting this update.

Here is the link to the entire album.  I will be uploading photos each day as we come back to the hotel and I will upload them here.  I'm not sure yet how often I will post a blog update.

The Grand Tour: Edinburgh Photo Album