Before I go any further, I need to mention that the UK in general is kind of obsessed with women's periods. Every single bathroom has instructions of what to do with so-called sanitary things. Many of them have special receptacles for sanitaries only All the hotel rooms have special little bags to put your business in and all of the bathroom trash cans have lids on them to lock the little nasties away. It's weird.
One other thing that occurred to me, and I'm sure that I could easily look this kind of thing up, but I've noticed over the years that there are never hair dryers in the bathrooms in Europe. And here, I realized that none of the bathrooms had electrical outlets, aside from the low amperage shaving outlets that some places have. I'm assuming because, while we have ground fault breakers in the US on our bathroom outlets, that we have 110 volt electricity and Europe has 220 volts. That's twice the charge for twice the fun and twice the danger. The high voltage is great for boiling water, but probably just not safe to have around a sink.
So Edinburgh. At this point of the trip, things are starting to blur a bit. I don't know if this happens to everyone, but I always try to squeeze every minute out of these kinds of trips, so I get up early, tired or not, and walk around for at least an hour and sometimes two. Ronnie and I do stuff together all day, and then we either have evening plans or not, but if we don't I'm usually writing.
There's a certain amount of pressure associated with Edinburgh because everyone is always talking about what a cool place it is and how much fun it is. Why do I have to have fun? Can't I be grumpy and not want to do anything or complain about what I do? It's not fair.
In any event, the city is very compact. Everything is within a square mile or so and it's completely walkable, aside from the fact that it's hilly and steep in many places.
We went to the Castle of Edinburgh, one of the must-sees of the city. It is remarkable, sitting built into a rock on top of a hill. And you can see how it would be a formidable fortress. And it's also remarkable for how any tourists can be there at any given moment. Very few things (just the crown jewels really) were very crowded to the point of discomfort, but just people everywhere.
I've tried to read and understand the whole Mary Queen of Scots thing and how she had to abdicate but her son became king of England and all the push and pull between Scotland and England, and it makes no more sense to me than before I read it. And I know Oliver Cromwell was important. I must look up who he is- I've certainly heard his name before. Hopefully I will look it up before I lose interest.
The castle sits at the end of a boulevard called the Royal Mile. By all accounts, which I believe because they make perfect sense, the royals hated being there. It was cold and damp and windy, and they only went there when their lives were in danger. The royal chambers were smaller than the first floor of my house. The Royal Mile is packed with tour groups and families, speaking all kinds of languages- I've heard a particular lot of German and Italian, and there are of course plenty of Japanese taking pictures of everything, as there are anywhere tourists may gather.
After leaving the castle we walked a bit of what is called New Town, which is relative. It's newer than Old Town, dating as it does from the 19th century. Old Town is more 16th century. Not hard to tell from a map. One is a grid and one is not.
It rained a bit here and there, but we had an umbrella and were fine throughout. The hotel here is nice, and has a decent exercise room where I used the rowing machine for a few minutes before dinner.
We're about to go out so here are a few pictures. I'll post more later.
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