Monday morning, first thing, we snarfed down breakfast at the Premier Inn – it was actually, good, the only redemptive thing about our overpriced stay there – loaded up one pannier with items we plan to store with the bikes over the summer, and cycled a kilometre to “Safestore” where we connected with “Blair” (a bearded, tattooed giant of a man whose passion is Saxon History but whose day job is manning the desk at Safestore Newcraighall).
Blair showed us the tidy unit we’d asked for (smaller = cheaper) and left us while John folded the bikes, we strategically loaded things from the pannier into the unit, video-inventoried what was there, and closed the door on unit 3529, sighing a big sigh of gratitude tinged with sadness.
We walked back to the Premier Inn, collected our belongings (mostly dirtly laundry, we’ll deal with that on Thursday), and walked to the train station where we hopped on a train into downtown Edinburgh. The train was full, the train station in Edinburgh – Waverley stop – was very busy with tourists and commuters.
We made our way to the Adagio Aparthotel – an apartment/hotelroom hybrid – checked in, unloaded, and then, because it was a spectacularly beautiful day, set out to walk the healthy hike to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. On the streets you could still see runners wearing their blue, “FINISHER: Edinburgh Marathon Festival” t-shirts from the race on Sunday.
Observation: it’s nice to have bookended this trip with marathons. We began with the excitement of the London Marathon, a month ago!
Like many attractions in Edinburgh, the Botanic Garden is free. (So democratic.) It was very peaceful and cool on what was a record-breaking, warm day in Edinburgh. There were lots of picnickers, multigenerational families, and, curiously – lots of East Indian* families enjoying the beautiful gardens. After about an hour and a half we decided to walk back to the touristy chaos of the Royal Mile. But not without a gelato. Sadly, we were too busy catching melting gelato drips in the heat to take photos, but they hit the spot.
Our destination was the National Museum of Scotland. When we first walked in, we thought it was your average modest-in-size, city museum in a fairly modern building. Boy oh boy, were we wrong.
The collection is massive. Beautifully curated. Spread out over a number of galleries, new and old. And the whole thing is free. I cannot speak highly enough of this museum. It makes our ROM look like a tiny, pathetic, badly curated dollhouse. But don’t get me started….
We’d had a long day, and Edinburgh’s hills were taking their toll. We dropped into a Sainsbury’s to pick up some breakfast fare for our ‘apartment-hotel’, came back here and put our feet up for a little while to finish yesterday’s blog. Then we popped just next door for a bit of dinner (Haggis Spring Rolls, anyone?), walked a little ways down the street to peruse a backyard cemetery, and called it a day.
*East Indian: most of the tartan and kilt and tweed shops on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh are owned by one wealthy East Indian owner. The goods are beautiful, but… I thought that was curious.
Monday May 25 – 22,900 steps
Winding down. Wel’ll be happy when you’re home. What a monumental accomplishment. Well done yo.u!
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