We were lucky to have a great trip home last August, and for Christmas we wanted a vacation. This should be contrasted with a tour. On a vacation, you meander and sleep late and spend whole days in your pajamas. On tour, you plan your days for sightseeing and restaurants, etc. We needed a vacation. Living here is living with a constant low level of stress, 24/7, and while we are free to acknowledge Christmas and can even buy secular decorations in the stores, it doesn't feel like Christmas here. Even having lived in warm climates before...the absence of music and all-out decorations (including decorated houses) means that the holiday is not "present" here. On the good side, we don't have all the awful commercialism. Being away from that is a truly joyous thing.
So we decided to go to Scotland for the holiday, but to go to the country and be in the quiet and solitude. It started and ended with one night in Edinburgh. Most pictures are in the dark...that's because the sun didn't rise until almost 9 AM and set at 4 PM!
First stop was Stewart Christie where Your Correspondent bought a gorgeous tweed coat.
After a couple of other errands, we headed to Rose Street, which runs parallel to Princes Street. Princes Street is the main street through Old Town, which is bordered by the Gardens and Edinburgh Castle. I love these little alley/streets where there is almost never any car traffic. The lights for Christmas made it seem like fairyland. It was about 4:30 in the afternoon when we took this picture.
To a pub for dinner! Children aren't allowed in after 6:30, but this old pub (the photo above is from outside the front door) was awesome. Fire in the fireplace, old fashioned wooden bar, comfy seats, and deeeee-licious fish and chips. Maybe a Scottish brew or two...
An Edinburgh "Close": This is a sort of very narrow alley way between houses built in the 1600's. On our last night, we went on a tour of Mary King's Close, an absolutely amazing trip to an underground part of Edinburgh that was covered over with new buildings hundreds of years ago. The original houses were like what you see on either side of the alley, and their tops were taken off but then their wall structures were used as the foundations and basements for a whole new layer of the city. Over time, those old, built-over streets were forgotten. The tour of this forgotten, buried Edinburgh is so popular that it sells out. We were lucky to make reservations while we were still on our country travels, and it was a great decision. Perfectly preserved streets and buildings from 400 years ago. Amazing. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed. The website gives additional good info.
Waverly Station, near where we stayed the last night.
Snax Cafe. One of the biggest challenges of traveling with family is when you are all freaking starving and no one knows where to go or what to eat. We often ask advice of our flat owners, but we also know that--especially in big tourist cities--they will refer us to the higher end places that their colleagues run. We like "hole in the wall" places both due to fun and expense. This is Snax Cafe, which we literally stumbled upon as we were all starving and looking for breakfast (it's 8 AM and d.a.r.k.). The breakfasts here were truly outstanding. The place was tiny. In front of the counter are 8 bar stools that face the window. But the place had a constant stream of customers. Apparently it's one of the "hidden gems" of Edinburgh. Breakfast here was ~5 GBP per person ($7-8). Let's compare that to KFC, where I took the kids for a snack that cost 30 GBP ($50...for a snack...ugh). Three ladies ran Snax, and if we had spent any more time in Edinburgh, I have a feeling we would have gone back there for many more meals!
This is the winter festival set up along Princes Street, starting near Waverly Station and extended for several blocks. Behind the ride is the Walter Scott Monument. It was weird and fun to see the juxtaposition of the garish modern lights with the ornate architecture. I was so. very. excited to see they had Christmas Markets--both a Scottish and a German section! But aside from some stollen and gingerbread, we didn't find anything that called to us. Hannah went berserk wanting to go on the rides, but I simply do not do portable carni rides. After much negotiation, I said I would go on ONE ride with her. They were just a little too big to send her by herself (and the boys had stayed at the flat a few blocks away while we ventured out).
She picked the Ferris Wheel. Now, let me tell you that the damned Wheel was tall. Like maybe 3 stories. Hannah loved that cage, dangling in the wind and rain. I was terrified and spent the whole time clinging to the center pole in the car like a koala bear hanging on to the last eucalyptus tree after the apocalypse. And then they stopped the damn thing at the very top to let other people off. It was like one slow motion heart attack. I was so scared I couldn't really even speak. I just stared ahead and chanted in tongues to try to keep us safe.
The first- and last-night stops in Edinburgh were really nice but the point of this trip was being in the country, and that was, truly, the highlight.
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