Monday, June 30, 2008

Woke up early to wash linens for Mayowa (the new intern with Christian Heritage who will be living with us for July) and clean up for her. She arrives today and I want it to be as nice as possible so she doesn’t feel like she is invading someone’s house. Our train left at 12:30, but we got there at 11:15 (by taxi); way too early. Good thing for Marks and Spencers and take away food! Addie’s first train-ride – she makes a cute choo-choo sound now! Tried forever to get her to sleep, and David was finally successful. I read about Edinburgh on the ride up and enjoyed the English countryside (through Durham and Newcastle). We arrived around 5. There are queues for taxis – whereas back home you’d just flag one down. Stood in line for quite a while! Edinburgh is big, has dark buildings like Budapest, and hilly, too. Our hotel for the week is Apex International, in the Grassmarket where lots of Covenanters were killed. Just a ten minute walk up the hill and you’re on High St. so it’s a great location. And a great view of Edinburgh Castle from our rooms! When he made reservations, David asked for a cot and when we arrived there was really a cot! Settled in and then headed out to dinner – the restaurants were busy because of graduations (guys in kilts). Finally, we ended up at the Outsiders, and our table had a great view of castle. See it on the right side of the picture?Addie was quite entertained by us curving our tongues – especially Gramma’s. She tried to do it, too. I had a huge bowl full mussles for dinner - seafood is pretty plentiful and fresh in Scotland. Addie was so tired, so D and I took her back (still no ‘real’ cot so we had to wait longer to put Addie down). She loves to watch the cars below our window on the street. She talks to them – directing traffic. M&D went to find music and found a pub around the corner, Greyfriar’s Bobby. They came home so we could go, too! It was nice music, fun hearing Scottish tunes - sounds like old Appalachian tunes kind of! It clicked when I was sitting there about the little dog – I remember reading a book at Greyfriar’s coffee shop in Chattanooga, and then remember reading something about it too in the Scotland book. I asked the bar tender about it and he told me a little, and then some older guy said he could tell me since he was a historian. We started talking and then he needed to get the drinks back to his table and invited me to come along, so I got David too. After a while it seemed this guy was kind of fishy, but still interesting. He was with a lady from Germany that he had met that night, and then took us all to another bar around the corner that was for more locals. It was small and old, and had three people in the back just playing pick-up music which we thought was really neat. We didn’t stay too long; headed back home. SO nice to have a comfortable double bed to sleep in together!