Our driver, Nick, picked us up at 10:30am for a quick drive to the airport. In the UK, the Monday after Easter (appropriately called Easter Monday) is a bank holiday and as such, there was no traffic on the roadways. Our drive took all of 15 minutes but had it been a normal weekday, it could have been up to 45 minutes. Just goes to show that you don't have to live in LA to have traffic issues.
Most of our visit to Manchester had a soccer theme. Friday evening when we arrived, we were guests in the hotel with one of the English Premiere League teams from near London called Astin Villa. Villa were to play a local club in the area called Burnley on Saturday about the same time as the Manchester United match. On Wednesday, 4/7/2010, Manchester United is to play one of the top teams from Germany called FC Bayern Munich. Well as luck would have it, as we were leaving the hotel for the airport, the FC Bayern Munich bus was parked out front of the hotel. Nick was gracious enough to snap this picture of Kaylee and me as a memento of our last minutes at the hotel. If you are a soccer groupie, the Worsley Park Marriott is the place to hang out.
We arrived in Edinburgh at around 1:30pm. The rain had stopped and the clouds were beginning to break. Snow was visible on the hills to the west of Edinburgh. The flight was smooth and uneventful. The entire trip was a cloud covered journey so we couldn’t see any of the countryside until we came down below the clouds on our approach to Edinburgh. The Edinburgh airport is small and easy to get around in. The airport is so small, in fact that you can get a few bucks at the currency exchange while watching for your bags to come around on the baggage carrousel.
Before going on to our first day in Edinburgh, I wanted to share some of the unique terms used in the UK – I got a kick out of some of these.
- Queue: In the UK, any line that you stand in is called a queue.
- Baggage Locker: The space over your seat on an airplane is called a baggage locker.
- Lift: An elevator is called a lift.
- Lemonade = Sprite
- Trolley: Any cart that carries something is called a trolley. The beverage cart on the airplane is called the beverage trolley.
- Crisps = Potato Chips.
- Chips = French fries.
- Kit: A soccer uniform (jersey, shorts, socks) is called a kit.
- Wee: means tiny or small.
- Close: means corridor or passage way.
- Kirkyard: means graveyard (Greyfriar’s Kirk is a famous graveyard near the Royal Mile).
Now on to our first day in Edinburgh…
Once we checked into the hotel and unloaded our gear, we headed out onto the Royal Mile to check out the neighborhood. We are staying at the Radisson Blu, which is located at the midpoint of the Royal Mile. The Royal Mile is long, steep, brick-lined street running southwest to northeast. The strip begins at Edinburgh Castle at the highest point in the city, and ends at Holyrood House (at the northeast end of the road), the Scottish residence of the Queen of England. The Royal Mile and many of the streets around Edinburgh have some pretty steep inclines very similar to San Francisco. When we exited the hotel, we took a right turn and followed the Royal Mile down the hill to the northeast towards Holyrood House. We checked out the shops that dot both sides of the street and enjoyed the sights and sounds of Edinburgh. The wind was whipping through the corridors and passage ways but we avoided any rain.
One of the really neat things about Edinburgh is the many passage ways that can be found between buildings throughout the city. These passage ways are called a ‘close’ and each of them are named (Mary Kings Close, Waterton Close, Crichton's Close, etc). Some of these walk ways are closed off (no pun intended) while others are accessible to everyone. Kaylee and I took a couple of these detours and wound our way down the hill towards Holyrood House. Most of the buildings throughout the city were built between the 1500’s and the 1800’s. When you get off the beaten path you can see the changes that have happened over the centuries. In one case, you could see where a building used to be attached to another, but today all that remains are the remnants of a staircase mid-way up a 5 story wall leading to nowhere. It is difficult to describe the incredible history and architecture of Edinburgh; pictures tell a better story. Here are some of the pictures from our long walk around Edinburgh.
One of our favorite places in our first journey down the Royal Mile was a small kirkyard called Canongate Kirk (keep in mind, we hadn’t gone up the Mile toward Edinburgh Castle yet). Most of the graves dated from the early 1700’s into the 1800’s. Some of the grave markers and headstones were so old that the engraving was no longer readable. It was a remarkable place and really brought the age of the city to the forefront; and these were not the oldest places in the city.
See if you can make out the inscription of this head stone. His name was Miller Crabbie.
We finally made it to HolyRood House and took some pictures from outside the gates. We have a tour scheduled for Wednesday but wanted to see the residence before then. From the outside, the property is beautiful. As we walked into a small courtyard outside of the residence, we watched two small children playing in a puddle, jumping and splashing around – it was hilarious.
By the end of our wanderings around Edinburgh, we were ready for a good night’s rest and excited to see Edinburgh Castle on Tuesday.
Here are the pictures from our first day in Edinburgh. As with other pictures, click on the image to enlarge.
