Blue Bells of Scotland

  Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Our transatlantic leg of the flight took off late, and arrived 40 minutes late at Heathrow. It took some doing to find the elusive Platform Five. In the home of Harry Potter, I admit I was beginning to wonder if it really existed. We followed signs for Platform Five, to a train ticketing area where suddenly no one seemed to know whether we needed tickets to this airport transit service or where it was. The signs now pointed only to Platforms One, Two, and Three. Every once in awhile, a sign for Platform Four appeared, but not Five.
Finally, I happened to turn and see it behind us. We ran quick before the arch turned into a brick wall and hid Platform Five again.
Nonetheless, we missed our flight. They booked us on the next one, and we reached Edinburgh a bit past noon, picked up our rental car, and spent 20 minutes driving in circles in Edinburgh's one-way streets trying to get to -- and back to-- and into -- the clearly marked lot on the map. A Scotsman at the Heathrow airport had shown us where this great lot was.

Andrew with our rental car, a Saab

It took some doing to find our way from there to the hotel. There are rank after rank of row houses, and the hotels are often housed in them, with only a small sign outside. Because the street signs are high up on the walls of buildings at each corner, it took some adjustment to finding our way around. We found the hotel 15 minutes before check in time, went back to the car, and carried our backpacks and carry-ons about three quarters of a mile back and checked in.

Edinburgh Street

After a brief nap at our hotel, Mary and Sarah arrived and woke us up.  We did a little walking around Edinburgh.

Arch, Edinburgh

A 'close,' or narrow street

We went to dinner at the Royal MacGregor, where I tried the fishpie and a hot toddy.

Laura and Sarah

Mary and Andrew

Afterwards, we went on the "City of the Dead" tour after dark and saw the café from which J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter and the graveyard underneath it in which the real Tom Riddle, and a number of other Riddles, are buried.

Our tour guide for "City of the Dead"

We saw Greyfriars Church and the famous Greyfriars Bobby, a dog that was so faithful to its dead master that it was finally buried there. We went to the Covenanters Prison at the back of the graveyard, where 1,000 Jacobites died, and from there, into a mausoleum that this tour guide claims is one of the most haunted places in Scotland. It really wasn't very scary, although he told stories of people being attacked by the ghosts.

Mausoleum, Covenanter's Prison, Greyfriars Church

The school on which J.K. Rowling based Hogwarts is also nearby, but we didn't get a chance to go see that.