Where We Had A Great Plan, But Realized It Just Wasn’t Going To Work
Yesterday’s plan for today involved leaving the morning tour at the end of the walking part, wherever and whenever that might be, and then zoom up to the Edinburgh Castle (“zoom” is a relative term here), to see if we could get in. This plan also involved the ready availability of taxis to drive us all the way back to the cruise port in Rosyth (I still can’t remember how to pronounce that), which is about 45 minutes away from Edinburgh. And, for some reason, the ship did not arrange for a shuttle from Edinburgh to Rosyth, even though there was a shuttle from Dublin to Dun Laoghaire (about the same distance).
Guest Services assured us that taxis will in fact take our fare (she’s personally done it), and that there are many cabs floating around, AND there are several “taxi ranks” (taxi stands) around the castle. The taxi issue is a non-issue.
This morning when we boarded the bus (all the male tour guides were dressed in full kilt mode, down to the little knife tucked in the right sock), our tour guide said that there were protests scheduled for later this morning (of course! We’re there, so there must be protests!). Therefore, he was flipping the itinerary – we would have our 90 minutes of free time, followed by the panoramic drive through old Edinburgh and then head out of the city, thereby avoiding the protests. As is tradition, exactly what the protesters were protesting was not clear.
We were dropped off around the corner from Edinburgh Castle, right at the beginning of the Royal Mile:
First, Andy walked up to the castle to see exactly how difficult it was. Turned out that it was do-able.
There were grandstands left over from the Edinburgh festival last week that, of course, blocked the spectacular view of the city .
It was at this point that we realized (by looking at the ticket line) that the idea of spending any time inside the castle was non-viable, especially since the castle’s website said the self-guiding tour takes at least 2 hours. Even if we did stay after the excursion, we wouldn’t have that much time – we had to get back to the ship by 4:00, which meant we’d need to start looking for a cab around 2:00 p.m.
Between the castle and the Royal Mile, that’s really all we would have been able to accomplish anyway. We still had another hour to roam the Royal Mile. Which we did – we bought some stuff, took some photos, and headed back to the bus. The concept of spending the afternoon in Edinburgh was officially toast.
Back on the bus, we drove around old Edinburgh. As is tradition, we never saw any protesters.
That was about it. We would have needed a couple/three full days to see anything more substantial. For a morning, it was fine.
Once again we had a free afternoon; Andy is doing his “long run” marathon training on the tread mill in the fitness center (doing the long run in Edinburgh was another casualty of the distance from Edinburgh and lack of shuttle).
Tomorrow: The Shetlands
Maryland Meshugas 