Saturday 9/28/13 - Belfast Ireland

We woke up at 6:00 today so we could be ready for our 8:00 taxi to take us to the train station. Paul & John had prepared a to-go sack breakfast for us since we were going to miss their wonderful breakfast. I don't know if I mentioned it earlier but Paul has a culinary background and the breakfast he makes every morning in fabulous and presented beautifully.

Today was the most hectic travel day of our vacation.
Taxi to Belfast train station
Train to Glasgow
Taxi to Glasgow airport
Plane to Belfast
Taxi to hotel

We did all of that without a single hitch. Everything went just as planned.

We checked into the hotel and it is very plush. Our room number? 313. More threes :-) Our trip is full of threes. And we live in 1306 at home.

Once we unpacked and rested for a bit we decided to take the hop-on hop-off bus tour of Belfast. It also gave us a good orientation of the city so we know where we are going to go tomorrow.

The tour was fun, although a little chilly on the open top bus, and the announcer was witty and funny.

Tomorrow will be a Titanic day all day.

Tonight for dinner we were going to go the restaurant at our hotel, which is very nice, The Fitz William. However, the hotel is directly next to the Opera House, and the restaurant fills with people going to dinner before the show. I felt like I was at prom night. Everyone in the hotel lobby and bar area was wearing the best, and I am standing there in vacation jeans and shirt.

So, the concierge was very helpful and obtained a reservation for us at another restaurant about a 10 minute walk away. It was called The Square. He said many people from the hotel have gone there and it has great recommendations. We took him up on his suggestion and when the time came we walked to find the restaurant. We of course do not know the area, and I was about to change direction and go back because we had not yet found it, and then there it was in front of us. We were so glad we came here.

It is a two story restaurant and the reserved tables are upstairs. Very nicely decorated and the staff was on top of everything. The owner (we found out later) even took part and he was our personal waiter. The food was wonderful. For the first course we had a chicken liver pate that was smooth and rich. For dinner Pat had the roast rack of lamb and I had the slow roasted duck breast, with orange glaze and cointreau. I do not eat a lot of duck because I have not had good luck with it in the past. This was crispy and yet moist, with wonderful orange overtones. Wonderful. We both agree the concierge did a great job in finding us place to have dinner.

ScotRail train We had an entire first class cabin to ourselves from Edinburgh to Glasgow.

uhhh, OK

Partial view of the bathroom in our room at the Fitz William. There is a bath tub big enough to hold both of us, and it did :-) And also a huge shower.

The Titanic Museum. We will be going there tomorrow.

The Harland & Wolff design and drafting building, where the plans for Titanic and sister ships were created.

The red building is the pump house which would drain the dry dock in a quick order.  Going on a tour of this tomorrow.

Sampson & Goliath. HUGE cranes and an important part of the Belfast skyline. Although they had nothing to do with Titanic.

The Belfast clock tower. It leans 4 feet in two different directions. Also, there are four clocks and they all show a different time, and none of them are correct. The tour guide said it was a typical Irish clock. :-)

Building on bus tour

Church on bus tour

Church on bus tour

The wall separating the 'troubled' areas. Some areas are more than 15 meters tall, and some now host murals.

A shorter portion of the wall. This part has been painted with murals much like the East Side Gallery in Berlin.

Building on bus tour. This building was heavily bombed during 'The Troubles". The two top floors were filled with the British police force until a few years ago.   

The Europa Hotel. This was the most heavily bombed building during 'The Troubles". This hotel is only three buildings down the road from where we are staying.

Friday 9/27/2013 - Edinburgh

Since we covered mostly what we were interested in on Thursday, we took it easy on Friday.

We started the day off by getting a one day bus ticket directly from the driver. There was a bus stop literally two doors down from where we were staying. We planned to use the bus as much as possible today.

There was only one real attraction that Pat wanted to do today, and that was the "Mary King's Close". The small alleyways between buildings are called a close. This tour is of a now underground close and old living quarters from the 1600's. Old Edinburgh was very heavily populated, with buildings built right next to each other, and the buildings were 8 to 12 stories tall. The poor people living on the bottom floors never saw direct sunlight, and the living conditions were horrible. There was no indoor plumbing then, and waste was poured into the streets.

When the commonwealth build was built in the 1800's, they sawed off the tops of some buildings and filled in others. The structures were reinforced and the new building built right on top of the old buildings. This is where the tour takes you. Into what remains of where people lived 400 years ago. And you actually get to walk up the old alley, Mary King's Close.

We purchased tickets for the 14:00 entry as they were booked up until that time, and we decided to walk over to the 'New Town' part of Edinburgh and do a little shopping and souvenir hunting.

We also went to the train station, in the Old Town, and picked up our pre-paid train tickets from a ticket vending machine. That was one less thing we would need to do the next morning when we would have all of our bags with us.

We had a nice dinner at the Salisbury Arms restaurant (Our second visit there) which is only about 200 yards down the road from 94DR. Since it was out last day in Scotland we decided we should try the black pudding, so we did. Yes, we know what it is made of, that is why we waited till the last day to try it. But it was actually good, and we both liked it.

We had also on previous dinners tried the Haggis, and we both liked that too. I will not tell you what is in Haggis. You will need to look that up.

That was pretty much our day on Friday.

We came back to the apartment and relaxed and packed our bags for the trip to Ireland on Saturday.

Stairway next to 'Mary King's Close' leading from the Royal Mile to Princes Street

Memorial for Sir Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott

Hey Ria! Benefit girls in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the Debenhams store.
They were excited to pose for the picture.

View of Edinburgh Castle from Princes Street

Thursday 9/26/2013 - Edinburgh Castle, Royal Mile, Palace of Holyroodhouse

Today was our first of two full days in Edinburgh, and the sun was out and it was a beautiful day!
The temperature today reached into the low 60's.

We started the day by talking a walk in the direction of the town center to drop off some laundry. Paul told us about a full service laundry which will wash, fold and deliver the clothes the next day back to our B&B. Awesome! We dropped off our clothes in the laundry bag which we had packed, and we were off to the castle.

We continued our walk north and in just a few minutes we reached the Royal Mile. The Royal Mile is essentially a one mile road which stretches from the Edinburgh castle downhill to the Palace of Holyroodhouse. The road changes names about three times along the way. It is clustered with heavily toursitic shops and pubs and street actors, but it is enjoyable to take the walk downhill from the castle to the Palace.

Once we reached the Royal Mile we took a left and headed up to the Castle. It was a sunny party-cloudy day and the views from the castle were fantastic. The guides mentioned several times how lucky we were to have such a clear day. The castle has protected the city of Edinburgh for 1,300 years. It has been both a fort and a royal residence since the 11th century, and it is the home of the Scottish Crown Jewels, which are claimed to be the oldest original Crown Jewels, dating back to 1503, having been upon the heads of James IV, Mary Queen of Scots, and Charles I. Many people are not aware that Oliver Cromwell sold off England's Crown Jewels in 1653 when he deposed Charles I and became Lord Protector of England. Next to the crown, sword and sceptre is the Stone of Scone, the coronation stone of Scotland's ancient kings (ninth century). Swiped by the english it sat in Westminster abbey from 1296 until 1996 when Queen Elizabeth agreed to let the stone go home to Scotland.

The castle contains several interesting buildings and museums, and the oldest building in Edinburgh, St. Margaret's Chapel. There is even a dog cemetery for the pets of the soldiers living at the castle.

After the castle we stopped for lunch at Saint Giles Cafe. We both had tea, tomato soup and we split a BLT sandwhich, which was warmed. The soup was home-made and was just amazing, not to mention the BLT!

After lunch we continued our stroll down the Royal Mile towards the Palace.
Along the way we came across Cadenhead's Whisky shop. We had read about this shop in the Rick Steve's book. This shop buys casks direct from distilleries and bottles them before the whisky is filtered, flavored or watered down. They will even let you sample one or two to help you decide on your tastes. We picked up a 24 year old one-quarter bottle of Cragganmore single malt. It is from a single cask, and is 54% alcohol. We both like the Cragganmore you can buy in the stores, and the sample we tried in the store was similar and I decided to pick up a small bottle. This should be a nice treat when we get home :-)

From here we continued down the Royal Mile to the Palace of Holyroodhouse. This is still an official royal palace/residence of the Queen Elizabeth. Since the 14th century this Palace has marked the end of the Royal Mile. Scotland's royalty actually lived here the majority of the time, preferring it to the drafty castle on top of the hill. Mary, Queen of Scots also lived here. Queen Elizabeth also frequents this palace from time to time, and comes here for official matters of state between England and Scotland.

A nice dinner at a nearby restaurant, The New Bell, finished off the day.

Edinburgh Castle. Looks small from this angle

View from Edinburgh Castle

Fireplace in the great hall

Dog Cemetery

Dog Cemetery

View to lower terrace

Mons Meg. Shoots 300 pound balls of rock

The 300 pound balls

She shows up everywhere...

So does this guy

The Royal Mile

The Royal Mile

View from the Royal Mile

Palace of Holyroodhouse

Palace of Holyroodhouse

Hey no cameras on the tour, how did we get this picture?

Abbey ruins behind the Palace. Cameras OK here...

Abbey

View of Arthur's Seat from the Palace gardens

Happy bird. No idea what kind of bird he is, but he was interesting. Will look him up.

Wednesday 9/25/2013 - Train to Edinburgh

We got out of bed at 07:30 on Wednesday so we could go the breakfast in the Olympic dining room at the White Swan. We could not pass up another chance to dine again in this room. We both had the full English breakfast, with coffee and orange juice. A great start to the day. Today it is misty, cold and gray which is not uncommon.

We finished packing our bags and checked out of the hotel at 11:00. The next train to Edinburgh was scheduled to leave the Alnmouth station at 13:10, so we had a little time to kill. The hotel held our bags for us while we strolled the shops on the main street of Alnwick. They also called a taxi for us to pick us up at 12:30.

We arrived at the station in a light rain / drizzle and we waited under the covered awning for the train to come.  It has become positively gloomy! Once onboard the train in the first class car they offered us sandwiches and coffee or tea. So we had lunch, as it was now about 13:30. The scenery was very nice between Alnmouth and Edinburgh. The train line ran along the coast in short stretches and it was quite scenic despite the weather.

At the Edinburgh station there was a taxi stand right off of the train, so it was no effort at all to get to our hotel, which was only about 2 miles from the station. Edinburgh is actually a small town. Which is unusual as I understand it was once the largest city in Europe.

We arrived at 94DR in just a few minutes. Paul was there to great us as we arrived. This place is beautiful, just gorgeous! It is a guesthouse B&B and the rooms are named after Malt liquors. We are staying in the Bowmore. We had originally booked a different room, but they needed to use the original room for a guest with special needs, so we were upgraded to a larger room. Yeah! It has a wonderful view up and down the street, and of Arthur's Seat. Arthur's Seat is a 822 foot high hill, the remains of an ancient volcano. It is a popular activity to hike to the top of Arthur's seat. Maybe we will do that while we are here, if the weather clears.

We will be here for three nights, so we unpacked our bags and settled in. We were both tired so we decided to rest for the remainder of the day, and go out somewhere close for dinner. We will take up sight seeing tomorrow. So we walked just up Dalkeith road to The Salisbury Arms restaurant. It is a good restaurant full of locals and a younger crowd. We both had Haddock fish & chips :-) I think we have both had our fill of fish & chips now. "Fish are Friends, not food" as Dori said :)

Back at 94DR there is an honesty liquor bar, so upon our return I tried two different single malts to finish off the night. Glenkinchie 12 year was mild and flavorful. I liked that one. The second was Ardbeg 10 year and it had kind of a ham flavor and was very aromatic. I did not care for that one and Pat didn't even like the smell of it. It really smelled up the whole room and I (me - Pat) did not care for that.

Waiting at the station in Alnmouth

East Coast Train

Coastal View. Notice the field on the right of the picture is on a cliff.

Coastal City

Coastal City

Typical village homes

Our room at 94DR

Our bathroom at 94DR, loving the towel racks!

Big tub too, time to relax.

The room is very large also.

View from our room at 94DR

View of Arthur's Seat from our room at 94DR