Tuesday, September 19, 2017
We packed up, bid farewell to the Lancaster Gate and our driver ferried us to Kings Cross train station for our five-hour ride to Edinburgh. We were veerrrry early to the station and had quite a bit of time to kill. I babysat the luggage while Stud Muffin wandered around, got us coffee, and turned in our Oyster cards to get the credit refunded from our unused Tube rides. After a bit, we traded places and I headed to the restroom.
Right behind where I’d been sitting was the area marked Platform 9 3/4, which, as any Harry Potter fan knows, is where Harry, Hermione, Ginny, and Ron catch the Hogwarts Express.
There’s a luggage trolley jutting out of the wall and an employee standing nearby to take pictures and hold your scarf so it looks like you’re running through the wall. Of course, we had to pose. There’s a huge Harry Potter shop there too. I wandered the shop quite a while, debating whether to buy any souvenirs there. I didn’t, and that’s probably my only regret of the trip. We have several HP fans in the family and I wish I’d brought them back something from there.
On our Strawberry Tours walking tour of London, our guide, Will, told us J.K. Rowling actually made a mistake about the train station in the first book. She’d gotten confused and said Platform 9 3/4 was at Kings Cross, but her description of the station was of Euston, not Kings Cross. Just a bit of Harry trivia for you.
The train ride was comfortable and the time passed quickly. We saw lots of beautiful scenery. In Edinburgh, we had a driver from the train station to our hotel. He questioned why he’d been booked when our hotel was so close. We shrugged, said we didn’t know the area, and besides we had luggage. But he was right. We could have walked to the hotel more quickly because he had to deal with traffic. And because of the traffic, he dropped us around the corner from the Old Waverley Hotel, so by the time we wrangled our luggage out, crossed the street and got it up the front steps, we were tired! There was a step up from the street, (not bad) then a long hallway, then more steps to get to the lobby. There was a sign that said, Ring Bell For Porter, which we did. A few moments later, a young woman arrived to carry our bags, our two big bags up the two flights of stairs. She hefted one and Dave carried the other up. We were able to check in and dropped off our luggage in our 3rd floor room. The lift was working. This is important to remember for later.
Then we hit the streets of Edinburgh.
First up: The Scotch Whiskey Experience. It’s a visitor attraction maintained and put on by one of the Scotch associations. It’s not a distillery, it’s an attraction. You ride in a motorized “barrel” (kind of like at Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion), while watching videos of the whiskey making process. You also visit a collection of over 3300 bottles of whiskey. It was truly fascinating. I’m not a whiskey drinker, but the place is amazing and definitely worth a visit.
The Scotch Whiskey Experience is located at the top of the Royal Mile, in old town Edinburgh, right in front of Edinburgh Castle. By the time we finished our tour of the Whiskey experience, the Castle was closed and we couldn’t go in. Every August, Edinburgh hosts a music and arts and drum festival, called the Tattoo. The castle is the venue for military drum corps and marchers. The bleachers that had been erected for the festival were being disassembled while we were there. We watched the process for a few minutes, then left to find dinner.
The Whiskey Experience had a restaurant and bar called Amber. I had to take pictures since we also have an Amber.
We wandered a ways down the Royal Mile and settled on the Ensign Ewart pub for dinner. It’s a small place but warm and cozy and charming. The dinner offering was venison pie and it was delicious! Tender chunks of venison in a thick gravy, topped with mashed potatoes. A wonderful and hearty meal to end our first day in Scotland.
We fell in love with Scotland and Edinburgh today. The old buildings are really, really old. Much of London was old, too, but many of London’s buildings were destroyed in the Blitz and there’s lots of newer construction. In Edinburgh, particularly where we stayed, we could tell we were in the midst of history.
Our hotel was named the Old Waverley, after a book by Sir Walter Scott, a revered Scottish poet and writer. Many of the streets and shops referred to Scott, or Robert Louis Stevenson, or Ian Rankin, or Robert Burns. From our hotel room, we could see the Sir Walter Scott memorial, on the right above.
Tomorrow (or next week, actually): driving in Scotland, more whiskey, and the very real possibility of sleeping in the car.
Writer of Sweet Small Town Stories of Love and Family 