Calton Hill

The next morning, I tell Oscar to make sure and take some time

with his cars and trucks while John deals with the Air Bnb problems.  I like Air BnB.  We’ve been doing really good with our places so far.  This is the first major problem we’ve had with one of our stops and the problem becomes the lack of someone to complain to.  If

you’re at a hotel, you would go to the manager.  So, I tell John to make it clear that the wifi needs to be fixed or we’re contacting Air BnB.  Some bad ratings and things go down for them.  So, we get to meet our “host” today.  Who is a young guy, who is nice like all the Scots are and doesn’t 

understand the wifi much better than us.  So, instead of listening to him be on the phone with the company, we head out to do other things.  First on the agenda, price sending stuff home.  We have accumulated a bag full of stuff in the UK and it’s time to get on a plane again in a week, so

we need to send stuff home.  We find a nice box at the post office and it’s actually too big for all we have, but it’s mainly a weight issue we’re dealing with.  We knew that the UK would be the most expensive place to mail things home from, but 123 pounds, or around $180 to mail home the amount we mailed home in Turkey is ridiculous.  We would be better off checking a bag and carrying it home at that rate.  So, we take all

that back home to make some decisions about what stays, what goes and what gets sent.  We head out to the “New Town” area of Edinburgh to see Calton Hill and cemetery today.  Promising a tram ride is the only way that I got Oscar to abandon his cars and trucks at home today.  We head across

the bridge and up to the hill that overlooks the Forth of Firth.  This is Edinburgh’s first park and we get to walk on Hume Walk because he petitioned the city for a healthy walk.  We can’t climb up on the Parthenon want to be because it’s too tall and only young people can make it up there.

We get to engage in an art project where your picture gets taken and added to the collage of others who are in the exhibition.  We head out of the park to find some lunch and hit the first place we see as we come out of the park, Howie’s.  At first, I think that there are a lot of tourists in here, but no, it’s a ton of Scots and we take the last table available.  The prices are reasonable and you get a set two courses for a set price, but we can’t decide and have to get two each and then add an order of 

mussels.  I have a cauliflower beignet, John has a sweet potato chili and the mussels were awesome.  My chicken and leek pot pie came after and John had risotto.  The meal was amazing, the service was exceptional for a place that full and we understood why the place was full.  We feel like we

should go back everyday that we’re here to some degree, too bad it’s so far away from where we’re staying.  We head over to Calton Cemetery to see David Hume’s gravesite with monument that couldn’t “exceed 100 pounds” according to the philosopher.  Clearly, 100 pounds went a lot further back in the day.  We walk down Princes’ street and see the trams.  We get a ticket to ride and just pick a place down the line that sounds

like a good place to stop, Edinburgh Gate.  Well, I don’t know why I thought that this would be a gate somewhere south of the Castle or something.  I just figured that Edinburgh is what we tourists see.  The tram kept going and going and going and going to the point that we were almost to the airport.  But Oscar got to spend some time on the tram and on the way back, he got to sit up front and watch everything the driver 

was doing to drive the tram.  We had a great conversation about the nature of sport with the ticket taker since we passed the stadium where Scotland will be playing France in a couple of days in the Six Nations tournament.  We hit a pub on the way home that was done up

like a 1950's diner diner because they had breakfast all day and Oscar and I both wanted waffles.  They were amazing and this place that looked like steak and shake would be awesome in America with the draft beer and alcohol available.  Damn that zoning stuff and alcohol licenses in  

America.  Bangers with waffles and a nice hard cider was a great way to end the day.