Last day of the Holiday

Tomorrow we head for Heathrow,  so today was our last full day in London.   

We started the day with a visit to the Royal Mail Postal Museum.  

Not a lot of people know that there is a second underground network in London.  This second network was built by the Post Office and used much narrower gauge trains to transport the mail across London between various sorting offices.  It was used from 1927 until 2003. 

These days some of the trains have been refurbished to carry people (although you need to be pretty short) and a ticket to the museum includes a ride on the "mail rail". 

After that we went to Leicester Square and had a nice meal at an Italian restaurant  before going to the movies to see Tron Ares.   We are now back at the hotel repacking ready for tomorrow morning. 

Catch up and Lots of Churches

It's  been a few days without an entry, but not much was going on.  Saturday was our last day in Edinburgh and we spent it mostly shopping and having a nice meal at a place called the  Copper  Still.  We didn't want to over tire ourselves as we had a long day of travel ahead of us on Sunday.

On Sunday morning we took the train from Waverley back to London.  We arrived in London in the late afternoon and had just enough time to go shopping in Fortnums and have an evening meal at Cafe Concerto.

Yesterday was our first full day in London and we got around. We started by doing a walking tour of "hidden London ", which included visits to a lot of Christopher Wren's churches.  

The photo above is of a "sword rest" in one of the churches,  where the men could store their swords during the service.  

This church is known as the wedding cake church, as the baker who baked the very first tiered wedding cake copied the idea from the church tower.

After the walking tour we ended up near St Paul's cathedral and decided to go in there. It's been many years since I last visited St Paul's and I had forgotten how Byzantine the decorations inside the dome were. We also went to the crypt to see the tombs of Nelson and Wellington,  amongst others.  No photography is allowed in the cathedral though so I'm afraid I have no pictures for you.  

We finished off the afternoon with a visit to the ruins of yet another  Wren church: St Dunstans.  After the church was destroyed during the bombings of WW2,  it was decided not to  rebuild it, but to turn it into a garden instead, and it's very beautiful. 

St Dunstans is right next to the Walkie talkie.

We finished off our first full day in London having dinner with our niece,  Alex and getting to see her new flat.  Tomorrow is the last full day of our trip and we will be flying back to North America on Wednesday. 

The Highlands and the Harry Potter train

Today we were up at 5am to walk to George IV bridge and meet the coach for our full day tour of the Scottish Highlands.   Several people didn't make it on time so the bus driver had to go without them. 

We set off in the dark and passed Falkirk, so I managed to see the Kelpies lit up. Unforunately,  they were on the other side of the bus,  so I didn't manage to get a good photo. 

We were very lucky with the weather and stopped several times to get some lovely photos.

We made it to Glenfinnan viaduct about 10.15 and enjoyed some views of the loch and the Glenfinnan Monument (seen in the foreground of the photo above). The Harry Potter steam train was due to cross the viaduct at 10.45.  So after a quick look around the gift shop, we set ourselves up in a good spot and got some good shots of the train on the viaduct.  

After that it was back on the bus to race the train to Malaig,  where we would be boarding it for its trip back to Fort William.  The train stops for a few hours in Malaig before it turns around,  so we had time to explore the small town and have some lunch before  boarding.  Malaig is pronounced "ma leg", which resulted in Becky frequently lapsing into  a fake limp and a fake Scottish accent with the line "och ma leg!"

The views from Malaig were beautiful.  In the photo below,  the island of Eigg is the one on the left with the shark fin appearance,  the one in the middle is Rum, and just on the right is the  edge of the Isle of Skye. 

We sat with a nice couple from the Czech Republic on the train and waited for the trolley with the chocolate frogs to come round, which it did.  However,  our bus driver had already supplied us all with lunch packs that included a chocolate frog as we boarded the bus, so we didn't need to buy anything,  not even a butterbeer hot chocolate.   

The windows of the  carriage were a bit dirty,  but I managed to get a decent photo of the viaduct while we were crossing it.

We saw lots of Harry Potter locations, including Dumbledore's Island, the Black Lake and the backdrops for many of the quidditch matches.  On the way back to Edinburgh we stopped to admire some highland cattle near Pitlochrie. 

We arrived back in Edinburgh after a 14 hour trip and headed straight back to the hotel and fell into bed.

Holyrood Palace

Holyrood Palace is the official residence of the Royal family in Scotland. Sort of the Scottish equivalent of Buckingham Palace if you like. 

We took a tour around the Palace this morning and saw the rooms of Mary Queen of Scots, where her secretary David Rizzio was murdered by Mary's husband,  Lord Darnley.

Outside the palace are beautiful  gardens and the ruins of an abbey.

After that we shopped on Princes St and visited the Scott Monument.   Also finally got some nice photos of the castle from the edge of Princes St Gardens. 

We had a late lunch/early  dinner  at Landy's  fish and chip restaurant again and headed to bed early, as we have to be up at 5am tomorrow  for our trip to the Highlands. 

Castles, Witches and Ghosts

Today was a jam packed day which started out with a visit to St Giles Cathedral,  which is just across the road from our hotel.

After that we walked all the way up the hill to Edinburgh Castle.   Just for once, the sun was out, which meant we got excellent views from up on Castle Hill. 

In the afternoon we went for tea at the Witchery, a very posh hotel and restaurant up on the Hill.  The last time I came here was for Andy's  birthday  dinner back in the 1980s.  

Our last outing of the day was a trip on the Ghost Bus, around all of Edinburgh's most haunted sites.

Our guide, Tommy Terror, was a scream, and we were visited by the ghost of "the granny", who haunts the bus, telling people to "get out of my seat".

A Day in Falkirk

Today, we headed out early to Edinburgh's Waverley station to catch a train to Falkirk.  We were a bit overwhelmed by the size of Waverley,  which seemed even bigger than Paddington.   

Falkirk's main claim to fame is the Falkirk Wheel, the world's only rotating boat lift, which allows boats to move between the Union Canal to the Forth and Clyde Canal, 35 meters below.  We bought tickets for a canal boat ride which took our boat up on the wheel and then on a short trip along the Union canal, through a tunnel that goes under the Roman structure of the Antonine wall and then back again.  

We had a nice lunch in the Falkirk Wheel visitor centre before heading over to Falkirk's second best known attraction: the massive sculpture known as The Kelpies.  The sculpture celebrates the role of the horse in pulling the barges on the canals.

Took the train back to a rather cold Edinburgh and now we're staying in for the night and trying to warm up.

Arrived in Edinburgh

We spent yesterday traveling back from Porto and arrived back in Gatwick in the evening.  Stayed in the hotel at Gatwick overnight and took an early flight to Edinburgh the next morning.

Our hotel in Edinburgh is on the Royal Mile and very castle-like.  Unforunately, we arrived too early to check in,  so we took a walk up and down the Mile, admiring the cathedral of St Giles and the local piper before doing some shopping in the old Tron Kirk (yes that's its real name), which has been turned into a craft market.

After that we took a tour of the Edinburgh vaults - a network of underground chambers under Edinburgh's south bridge.  Very spooky!

By this time we were able to check into our hotel room. We had an evening meal at a fish and chip restaurant called Landy's just across the road from the hotel.  They had a great cocktail menu,  so we had liquid dessert.