Edinburgh for David's Birthday

We took a short trip to Edinburgh on Friday for David's birthday, and to give David's parents a chance to see the city for the first time. We arrived by train from St. Andrews, and stayed in the same hotel we used when we took students in January. We arrived mid-afternoon and settled into the hotel, then spent the remainder of the afternoon wandering around the walls of Edinburgh Castle.

John and Leah on the train across the Firth of Forth on the way to Edinburgh.

David with the kids and his parents in front of Edinburgh Castle.

Leah chasing yet another pigeon in the castle. The collective population of Scottish pigeons is going to breathe a huge sign of relief when we board that U.S. bound plane in June!

Couldn't pass up this photo opp!  I wonder how much longer these are going to be a familiar site in the UK?

We spent a few hours at the castle, and were actually one of the last groups to leave. It was a lovely time of day to visit, because the castle along with most other tourist sites in the UK have just switched to their summer hours, meaning they are open until 6:00 pm. The weather isn't yet terribly summery, however, and though it stays light until well past 6:00 pm, those last few hours of the day can get quite chilly, so any tourists who are in town have retreated to a nearby pub on the Royal Mile at this point in the day. Therefore, we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. 

It had rained before we arrived, and so the benches along the castle walls were full of fat droplets of water. Leah was passing the time waiting for her Nonni and Emma to emerge from seeing the Crown Jewels by swishing her hands through the droplets, making a complete mess of her coat and her trousers. A wee Spanish boy who was on a leash-like lead held at one end by his mother thought this looked like an excellent past-time, and he came over and joined in. His mother wasn't too enthusiastic about the idea and she tried to dissuade him from getting wet. He was determined, though, and once Leah realized that she had a fan, she really started to smack the droplets with her hand with as much force as possible. This made the little boy laugh with glee, and made his mother tighten her hold on that leash to keep him clear of the flying water. I felt bad for her, and since Leah was now quite soaked, I decided to bring an end to her fun by picking her up. She was not happy at all about this, and had a rare, full-blown, top-of-lungs, boots-flailing, back-arching tantrum as I carried her away. Thankfully, the castle was quite empty at this point, so the witnesses to this display were few in number!

Fortunately, my secret weapon for ending bad behavior was close at hand: John. He can almost always draw Leah out of a tantrum, either by quickly engaging her in some other questionably-appropriate activity, or by out-shouting her until she loses interest in making her voice heard. In this case, he suggested that he take her down into the castle prisons, and when she stopped crying and agreed, we all thankfully followed them. I stepped away for a few minutes to give my nerves a bit of a break, and I headed to one of the whisky shops in the castle. I was in search of a specific kind of whisky for my brother-in-law, but also hoping that they were still giving out free samples. No such luck, alas, as they were closing up the till and had put away all the samples by the time I got there (though I did get there just in time to buy the gift!)

When we were shooed out of the castle at last, we walked down the Royal Mile to the closest Pizza Express, where I had made a reservation for dinner. Pizza Express is a ubiquitous part of modern-day British culture...one can't travel too far in the UK these days without coming upon one. It's a moderately sophisticated chain that serves individual, thin-crust Neapolitan-style pizza along with some Italian foods like antipasto and risotto, but also some menu "innovations" like Hawaiian pizza that would make an Italian shudder. The beauty of Pizza Express is that the restaurants are clean and centrally located and they have both an excellent three-course kids meal and a good wine list, ensuring that the kids are fed over a long enough period of time to keep them occupied while the adults can finish a 150ml glass of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo!

Leah digging into her Bambino meal at Pizza Express. 

Not only do they give kids a gelato at the end of the meal, but they serve it with a wee cup of warm milk dusted with cocoa powder called a bambinoccino! 

The next day, David and John set out to hike Arthur's Seat, and David's parents took Emma to the Palace of Holyroodhouse for a tour. Leah wasn't up for either of these, so after dropping everyone off at their appropriate spot, I walked Leah back up the Royal Mile.

Leah and John just before the boys started their hike up Arthur's Seat (in the background).

 I stopped at the lovely (and free!) Museum of Childhood on the Royal Mile, which is a great place to take kids. It has three floors full of toys from yesteryear, all safely encased in glass curios, and activity centers in the middle of the room for the kids to explore. Leah found a wooden parking garage on one floor and played for a few minutes on her own. After a bit, another boy came over to see what she had, and I nodded my head towards him to indicate to her that she should share with him. She eyed him warily, then extended one of the trucks in his direction. "You want a lorry?" she asked, with a decent British lilt in her voice. The boy said "sure" and took it with a shrug, and I could tell he was American. He played on his own for a bit, and Leah continued with what she was doing, but at one point she started to describe how her "lorries" were going up the "lift." After a bit, she lost interest and moved on to a puppet theatre across the room. She went around the back and spent some time getting the puppets on her hands, and while she was behind the curtain, the American boy came over and sat in front, as if he were waiting for the show to start. A second boy joined him, possibly assuming that something was about to happen, and so I quickly got out my camera. After a bit, Leah opened the curtains, and her face registered immediate shock to see that an audience had gathered. I was really hoping that she was going to muster up a bit of a puppet show in a British accent, but she kind of froze when she saw those two boys sitting there, and just managed a weak smile before running off!

 After the climb and the palace tour, we all met back up again at a little cafe we had found the last time we were in Edinburgh. It's just far enough off the Royal Mile not to be too attractive to tourists, and so it's a pretty quiet place. There are huge couches and big windows inside, and the cafe features something for everyone: baskets full of books for toddlers, filled rolls (John), free wifi (Emma), illy coffee (me), chocolate cake (Nonni and Poppi) and a Christian bookstore next door for David!

We hunkered down in the cafe for an hour, then walked to New Town (as opposed to Old Town Edinburgh, with the Royal Mile). New Town is a Georgian showcase of well-planned streets and elegant gardens...a distinct difference from the narrow, windy, cobbled streets of Old Town. New Town is usually a lovely place to spend an afternoon, but since the afternoon was turning out to be a windy, cold affair, we only made it as far as the first Primark before giving up and ducking inside for a bit of shopping. Poor John has worn through the three pairs of non-school-uniform trousers he brought from the States, so I forced him to pick out a few pairs and try them on in a dressing room. For John, this is akin to having a tooth pulled, and so I was thoroughly thankful to have grandparents along to keep the other two occupied long enough to take care of this unpleasantness. We managed to find three pairs that were suitable in about 10 minutes, and so he and David moved on to the Waterstone's next door while I gathered a new pair of pajamas for Leah (her toes are literally busting through the seams of the footies we brought from home) and paid for the whole lot at the till.

We had just an hour or so before we needed to head towards the train station, so we agreed to yield to Emma's request to have dinner at yet another British chain called Yo Sushi. This is one of those places where pre-made sushi winds its way through the restaurant on a tiny conveyor belt that passes by each table, on colored plates that signify the item's price. There's also a little doorbell-like button on each table that you can press to call over a waiter and order bowls of soup, udon, or tempura. You take what you want, and at the end of the meal, the waiter counts up all the different-colored bowls and brings you a bill. It was a fun concept, and Emma and John were seated next to the conveyor belt so they had a grand time serving the table.

Our "bill" at the end of the meal!

 After dinner, we walked back to the train station and caught our 7:30pm train back to St. Andrews. There weren't many other people making this journey out of Edinburgh just as the weekend began, so we had a train car almost to ourselves. John had bought Leah a little pail of play sand at the Primark while he was suffering the trouser-shopping, so she was quite happy to have a table seat to ourselves to spread out her castle-building equipment!