Edinburgh Castle

This morning we were surprised to find that southern Scotland was enjoying yet another day of (mostly) sunshine when we went down to breakfast. It had been raining off and on since we arrived and we were hoping to have at least a pleasant morning for our visit to the historic Edinburgh Castle. The castle is perched high above the city on a volcanic outcropping that reportedly dates back millions of years. We're told that the first evidence of early man on the mount dates to about 800 B.C. and by the look of the stone work there, it appears that the Scots have been building things atop that rock ever since. If you're into military history, Edinburgh Castle is the place to go. They have several very fine military museums there complete with vintage weapons, uniforms, and colorful artwork -- enough to keep you busy for several hours. At one exhibit they even allowed us to try on some of the Scottish military regalia from days of yore. That's me in the fusilier's furry hat there. Afterward, we got to see the room where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to James VI of Scotland, the future James I, King of England.


Our mission to the castle completed, we made our way back to the Straven Guest House where the Mini sat packed and ready for our trip to Northern England. For this vacation to the UK we bought a Garmin Nuvi 370 which comes complete with maps of Europe. Wow! What a cool piece of gear. Even though our Northumberland B&B didn't have an actual address to enter on the GPS, we just set the B&B's postal zip code into the machine and it literally took us door to door, from Edinburgh, Scotland to Hexham, Northumberland, England. The only mistakes we made were when I didn't follow its commands closely enough, at which point it reacted instantly to my mistake and said, in a somewhat disdainful voice, "Recalculating."

I'm continuing to adapt to driving on the left side of the road, though it's hardly relaxing. There's no such thing as putting one hand on the steering wheel, draping the other arm over the adjacent seat, and cruising. No, it's almost like playing one of those road-racing video games. The roads are as narrow as your average person's driveway with the roadside hedge sometimes growing right up the pavement's edge. Road signs are either too small to be seen from a moving vehicle, too low to escape being covered by foliage, or missing altogether. As with most countries, drivers here aren't very patient with folks learning to drive, no matter how old they are. They pass on hills. They pass over double lines. They pass on blind curves. Usually they do all three at once if they can manage it.

Naturally, in this particular video game, those weren't the only hazards I encountered today. Almost as soon as we got into the car in Edinburgh it started to rain. They only time it altered from that condition is when it rained even harder. And, Since road builders of these driveway-sized roads in rural England seem to prefer the roller coaster-style, uphill/downhill style of construction, the little Mini Cooper spent much time hydroplaning through the low spots. By the time we got here just before dark I was more than glad to park the our faithful Mini and pry my fingers off the steering wheel.

But what do you think? Our very congenial hostess, Margaret met us at the door with a smile, a cup of tea, and a cozy living room graced by a crackling fire to relax and drink it in. The forecast for the weekend calls for more rain. But what the heck, we have the fire, we have our books, and if the tea and scones hold out, we'll be just fine. If you don't see us in a month, just forward our mail.

ciao, tutti!

We arrive safely in Edinburgh

Well, here we are finally at our first B&B in Scotland. We arrived here without much in the way of trouble or inconvenience and our luggage showed up right along with us. Right now it's raining, just to make us feel welcome, but when we got here the sun was shining -- not like in Nevada, but shining nevertheless. Pictured here is Concetta next to the Mini Cooper we rented. I think it's probably a blast to drive, but so far I've been so nervous driving on the "wrong" side of the road I've scarcely noticed. It's a six-speed gear box, as they call it, which is neat. Driving on the left side feels pretty natural once you do it for awhile. We practiced by "pretending to be lost" while exiting the airport. We just drove in circles for about 30 minutes while I got the hang of it. Finally, once we figured out the GPS (and fed it the correct address) we found our way to the expressway and off we went. Soon after we arrived in Portobello, the location of our B&B.

The trip almost didn't get off the ground -- literally. Our Reno plane was well over an hour late taking off, which allowed me to deduce one thing for certain: Boeing 767s do not operate on LINUX. How do I know this? Well, when we wanted to take off from Reno yesterday the plane refused to "boot up" properly. Three times they shut the systems completely down, and three times they powered it up before we were ready to pull away from the gate. From this I deduced that the 767 must run on Windows which still requires such foolishness. They told us that all the systems just refused to come online. Ah huh. Those of you from Technology will certain be familiar with that scenario. I stopped short of asking the crew if the cockpit had a memory card reader.

Anyway, since I always insist on a two-hour layover between flights we managed to make our connection in Salt Lake City with twenty minutes to spare. But things were indeed tense there for awhile.

A word about babies: Crying -- even screaming -- babies are a fact of life on airliners. It's best to be prepared. We bought Bose "noise-canceling" headphones to isolate us from unavoidable background clutter. They don't actually cancel all noise but still do a darn good job if you crank the volume up on your IPOD or airplane sound system. We had an ornery little critter on two of our four flights who probably drove his nearest neighbors to harbor thoughts of homicide by the end of the ordeal.

But that's not the only problem with airline travel. You may be as close to heaven as you're ever going to get when traveling at 35,000 feet. However, inside the plane things are not so heavenly. In an effort to use fuel as conservatively as possible, flights are more packed than ever before. Every seat is taken and every square inch of overhead bin space is taken as well. Best to make sure you arrange to get on the plane early so you can stow your gear. Otherwise, you may have it under your feet for several hours. I suspect that the way airline pack folks into those aluminum people-movers should probably be monitored by the Geneva Convention for evidence of cruel and unusual punishment.

But hey, there was one thing that wowed me. The seat-back computer displays for games, TV shows, and Movies is absolutely terrific. You can punch up your plane's progress on the globe, watch any one of a dozen movies, listen to CD albums, and compete in a trivia game against your fellow passengers, all without leaving your seat or straining to see. That's way cool!

Anyway, we're here and we just had our first dinner in the UK. Afterward, Concetta said, "what kind of soup do you suppose that was?"

"I can't place the taste," I said, "but it was green and it was hot."