 |
| Scottish Breakfast: Bacon under the knife, tomato, egg, sausage, a potato scone (their term for what's more like naan or pita) and haggis is the small brown/gray meatball left of the fork! |
This morning we started off with one thing on the Scottish bucket list—trying haggis! Anyone who knows what that is has an immediate averse reaction to it, and quite a few people told us they’d never eat ground up organ meat wrapped in sheeps’ stomach! But nowadays, the filling is almost always wrapped in normal sausage casing, and the meat mixture itself is like a finely ground, spiced hash. We actually quite liked it!
The rest of a full Scottish breakfast—which every B&B and hotel offers—includes your choices from: bacon (more like ham—not “streaky bacon like we eat in the US), sausage, beans, tomatoes (grilled & warm), mushrooms, black pudding, toast (white, dark or a mix), eggs (poached, scrambled, or fried) and porridge (oatmeal). You can order any or all of the items, and it’s definitely energy producing when you’re heading out to walk all day!
 |
| The Filling Station |
After breakfast we headed out to the Royal Mile again to locate “The Filling Station” – a pub/restaurant where son-in-law Ben worked years ago when he spent time living in Edinburgh. Once we knew where to look, it was easy to find, and we put it on the agenda as our lunch stop for later.
We wandered through several tourist shops and down a few side streets until we found ourselves at the Scottish National Museum. Since every museum in Scotland has free admission, we popped in and looked at several different displays—the animals of the world section and the science and technology exhibits. As with any great museum, we could have spent many hours instead of just one!
 |
| The great hall at the National Museum of Scotland |
 |
| Three floors of the animals and nature section. So cool! |
Outside again, across from the museum, we found a small statue of a little Skye terrier named
 |
| Greyfriar's Bobby |
 |
| Lucky nose rub for me! |
Greyfriar’s Bobby. His story is bittersweet and Disney even made a movie of it. Bobby’s master (a doctor) died, and the dog followed his coffin to the graveyard. For fourteen years he kept watch over it—adopted by the townspeople and sleeping with temporary caretakers. People now stand in line to pat Bobby’s nose—making it shiny. It’s as if now everyone is keeping watch over the faithful dog!
Back on the Royal Mile we had reservations for one more touristy interaction—a tour called “The Real Mary King’s Close.” In the very early days of Edinburgh, people lived in narrow lanes off of High Street called closes. Mary King was a very rare woman of high enough stature to have a close named for her. Over time, more and more buildings were built around and over the closes, until there was a hierarchy with the very poor living at the bottom levels and the wealthier in the pleasant middle floors, and poor again at the top. Touring the lower level housing at this excavated site was both entertaining and sobering. It wasn’t a very pleasant way to live—with no indoor plumbing or heating or much space. It was a super educational tour.
 |
| The entrance to The Real Mary King's close |
 |
| Mary King's Close--the actual original street. |
 |
| Cool thing in the UK--all credit card transactions done at the table! |
 |
| Jan gets to pet Bobby's nose too. |
 |
| Chocolate souffle--divided by two. Yum! |
We finished the tour and then ate chicken fajitas for lunch at The Filling Station, where we discovered a glitch in my phone camera that meant I’d lost all the pictures from that morning. Luckily we were doubling up on most things—Jan with his Nikon and me with my Samsung—but I’d lost his photo with Bobby, so we zipped back to the statue, retook the picture and then went to a funky little bohemian-like restaurant called Lovecrumbs for dessert. A chocolate soufflé was the perfect thing to make up for technological issues.
By this time our last day in Edinburgh had come to a close. We hopped into one last shop and then collected our suitcases from Kuan at Amar Agua. Smart now, we grabbed a bus to the train station and caught our train for Glasgow. It was sad to say goodbye to Scotland’s capital—we know it’ll be a long time until we return. I wish we’d had more time!
No comments:
Post a Comment