Arriving Edinburgh

This morning I had breakfast with an ex Australain lady, also staying at the b and b, who now lives in London. Her daughter is in the choral course that sang at Evensong on Thusday night. Consequently I was a bit rushed leaving and left my power point adapter behind. Luckily this place has one and I won’t need it when I leave. The proprietor in Durham thought I was mad carrying a pack but there were 98 steps ( I counted) to go up to get to the station plus some steep path before and after.. Carrying a case would be more difficult and no, I have not heard of taxis. Maybe when I am old.

I booked my seat on the train as soon as the seats became available and it was one of the worst in the carriage. I need to find out more about how the system works before I do that again. It was a window, as requested, but there was a big panel obstructing ¾ of my view. All the other window seats were either taken or reserved from the next stop. There were a few vacant seats supposedly reserved for disabled . Another lady, much younger than me was sitting in the one on the right hand side of the train – the best side because the train goes along the coast for part of the way. A window looking left was better than none. If she was ‘disabled’ I was more so.

There were quite a few steps to get from the train to the street. There must be a formula – If walking 5 km on the flat is worth 1 icecream, then walking 5km carrying 12kg on the flat is worth how many icecreams ? Also, If going up 100 steps is worth 1 piece of chocolate, how many pieces of chocolate is going up 100 steps carrying 12kg?

I found my way to this lovely flat in Stockbridge. It is bright and airy, small kitchen area off lounge with a view of a nice little fenced off garden , part of a larger green bit between this row of buildings and the row behind. Nice bedroom and small bathroom. The owner / manager ? was here as arranged and I left my bag and she gave me a key. I found the nearby pub that she said had better than average pub food, wasn’t too loud and nice staff.

After dawdling over lunch I wandered off in the direction of the tourist bureau but first just had to go into a wool shop that had displayed in the window the vest I have just made my daughter. I told the lady in the shop. After a little more conversation she said that they send a lot of wool mail order to Australia and she could not understand it “You have lots of sheep” she said. I told her that whereas we might have 5 ranges within a brand she had 7 or 8 and she had far more colours in some of the ranges. She also had some Italian wool I have never seen.

I then went into Jenners, an old department store I had been told about - sort of like ???? in London with the open central area and wooden decorated railings and stairs or lifts, no escalators. Somehow or other I found I was in the food area and went past a guy offering tastes of whiskey. At lunch I had been reading some of the stuff I had on Edinburgh and I had read about whiskey. There was no one else there so when he started to talk to me, I thought why not? I told him I had not drunk Scotch for about 20years and then not much but I had just arrived in Edinburgh and thought I should try some. He talked to me for ages , explaining all sorts of things and occasionally, because some of what I had read had stayed in, I was able to make an intelligent remark. He knew from the start that there was no way I was buying. His cheapest was on special at 51 GBP

There was a huge queue at the tourist info place. It is poorly designed because there was just one queue for people wanting accomodation ( most of them judging by the luggage), tour bookings and just a little info, like me. I did not join the queue. There are very many people around – the last week of the festival. Hopefully many are just here for the weekend.