Edinburgh

"Dear Edinburgh, how I remember you, your winter cakes and tea, your bright red fire, your swirling cloaks and clouds," Lain Chrichton Smith

18.07.2010 - 20.07.2010
View Summer Travels - 2010 on Queen Anne's travel map.

I'm fairly sure I was meant to live here.

There is something so deeply satisfying about this city...like a freshly baked loaf of bread. The buildings are made of a creamy tan limestone which gives a beautiful consistency to the city. The dark green grass and the bright red summer flowers welcome this warm season and the people drape themselves on the lawns of every available green space, soaking up the rare bursts of sun and reveling in their glorious town.

Everywhere we turn, there is something that charms -- the coffee houses, the colorful wool, the glory in their saints and writers and queens. We ask directions and people graciously share their time. Even though we speak the same language, we estimate we understand about one third of what they're saying. But we nod and they can tell by the looks on our faces that we have no idea what they've just said. A classic case when asking directions to our hotel. They give me the address and I tune in, alarmed. "Our hotel is fairly rude?" "No, No," the guide explains. "It's just on Fairy Road, nothing rude about it" This happens daily.

We join the masses of tourists visiting the Castle of Edinburgh, taking a bus out to Rosslyn Chapel, trying haggis and welsh rarebit and the beers that are brewed locally. Tomorrow, we take a ride out to the Highlands.