We made it!

 The overnight flight was wonderful and horrible at the same time. No glitches--they treated us right--extra leg room--SO excited to be going, yet, pretending to sleep for 4 hours didn't work at all. We arrived in Edinburgh very sleep deprived. Customs was easy and friendly. Then, the car rental.... We were told our car was reserved for 11am and it was 8am so the car we wanted was not available.  The guy explained that the bigger better car he had available was much cheaper than normal and diesel so would practically save us money in gas. After he told us the daily rate and we said okay THEN he said we needed to add insurance for almost the same daily rate (25 pounds a day.)  We started to say no and he said we'd have to pick that one or one for 15 pounds a day as our home insurance wouldn't cover us.  We still looked annoyed. He finally said you could just get tire and windshield insurance, the two most likely things to be damaged, for a mere 7 pounds a day.  As we jimmied the car out of the tiny parking lot and tried to negotiate from the left side of very narrow roads we felt a bit fleeced.

The harrowing ride from the airport to the hotel in Edinburgh City Centre almost killed us both from anxiety. The GPS read to us in perfect English but I swear she said the same thing about 8 times: "at the roundabout, take the second exit." We felt like we were doing figure eights all the way there and we kept looking the wrong direction for oncoming traffic.  I might have told Judd 6 times that he was too near the left curb out my window and he was too busy looking at the head on traffic on the very close dotted line out his right window.

But we survived to explore a bit and visit several parks and pubs. When we came out of one museum, a wedding procession was just going into the church across the street. Stories to follow.

Edinburgh Castle, closed for the night

My Scottish name is Morag....THAT's going to hurt in the morning.

Neighbor Carol (Scottish name Iona), always thinking of us, sent a quiz today to make sure we're prepped for our trip to Scotland. 
Take the quiz yourself:  http://www.buzzfeed.com/hilarywardle/scottish-names-are-the-best-names?utm_term=.oyRY7QZk9J

Judd came out as Fergus.  (Oh boy--that's going to go to his head.)

I came out as Morag. (Doesn't sound flattering yet....)

We watched Disney's BRAVE last night, having already depleted all the re-runs of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander (season 1) (and running out of time to actually read the next 6-7 novels in the series. ) We've got yellow stickies in about 6 travel books on Scotland but not one book has all the details of places we want to visit.  I'm about ready to razor blade out selective chapters from each book to meet my needs (like Judd does with his AT maps.) It won't make it very nice for the next person to borrow a Scotland travel book, but this week is all about me.

Scotland, here we come.

Just 4 days til we depart for Scotland. We've been inspired for quite a while. In January we held our second annual Burns' Night, complete with the Address to the Haggis and a Toast to the Laddies and Lassies. We've got no fewer than 6 travel books on Scotland and have been studying all that one can see and do there. We've been reading novels and histories and watching TV shows and examining maps. And now we're packing to actually go. Will tell you all about it later.

 

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