We started this morning with a lovely breakfast roll at a café near our hotel called “Fed and Watered”. From just outside the café we had a lovely view of the Edinburgh Castle. The photo really illustrates the size of the hills in the city – on the map our hotel only looks to be a few blocks to the castle – but the map doesn’t show that those blocks are very steeply uphill.
We took a nice walk through town and ended up in a grocery store called Sainsbury’s. It was a small store right in the heart of town, but it was still fairly well stocked and gave us a glimpse of shopping Scotland style. A couple notable things: Eggs here are just placed on a regular shelf and aren’t refrigerated. There was a reasonable selection of organic produce with broccoli at ₤3.29 per heard. At today’s conversion that’s roughly $6.15! A package of four kiwis, was ₤1.19 and a single zucchini ₤1.05.
Spam is universal. This wasn’t all that surprising. I liked to see that it was nicely positioned right next to the canned Haggis.
The candy shelves had all sorts of wonderful things including many varieties that we had never seen before – and a few we’ll need to go back to sample: They have peanut-butter Kit-Kats. There were an interesting treat called Flapjacks that were an oat based bar – Snickers is making one with peanuts. And my personal favorite was the Yorkie – which is clearly for boys only.
We didn’t sample any of the candy because we knew we were just about to have lunch. We met Graeme and Rose and her dad Gordon at a lovely pub that had a great selection of Tapas. It was great to see Rose, and to meet her dad. They had just met with the wedding photographer. They seemed fairly calm for a couple in the last couple of days before their wedding. They headed home after lunch to wait for the arrival of Roses’ brother and her maid of honor.
Since the afternoon turned absolutely beautiful – it was easily in the low 70s with only high clouds, Mary and I decided to spend the afternoon exploring the Royal Botanic Garden. It was a lovely place with beautiful carpet-like lawns, and some of the largest hedges I’ve ever seen. What we didn’t anticipate was that it was fairly nicely situated on a hill with a lovely view back toward Edinburgh Castle. Here’s Mary at the garden –Edinburgh Castle is the building on the right well in the distance behind the building behind Mary that is inside the gardens. We expect to visit the Castle in the next couple of days with Dan who arrives tomorrow.
We had dinner tonight at a pub right near our hotel that we had walked by this morning. It was right near the photo of Mary at the base of the castle. We went specifically so I could try my first Haggis. I didn't want to tait till the wedding where Graeme has said there will also be a late-night haggis serving. I'm glad I didn't wait. I won't try to guess exactly what was in tonight's meal, I can just say that I thought it was delicious. You can read more about it here. It was served with another traditional Scottish side dish "Neeps and Tatties" - that's turnips and potatoes. A bit of brown gravy and it was just perfect. I didn't expect the fancy garnish though...
