April 19 - Tea crawl

   We came home to the STAY.CENTRAL last night about 10:30 pm and had to walk through Three Sisters (the outdoor pub and beer garden which is our lobby.)  It was elbow to elbow, just to walk through between the stag parties and hen parties. We  saw a cadre of guys with curly wigs and Vote for Stepho t-shirts. There was a separate bunch of dudes dressed all like Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow.  A female contingency was dressed all as bumble bees.  Our nice hostess went back out in the fray to get a beer and a bottle of wind.  It was pretty quiet on the 4th floor. We worked on posting a few pics on Facebook (and worked for a long while on Judd remembering his FB password.)

   We were up Sunday morning almost as if jet lag weren't a thing.  After a full Scottish breakfast  (poached egg, saute-ed mushrooms, grilled tomato, beans, haggis (or "vegetarian haggis", toast and tea) we were off to hike Arthur's Seat and Salisbury's Crag. (I initially though this was Salisbury's Crack and I thought the Scots had a thing for bottoms.  Turns out we were in the middle of a 10 mile run and had to cross rows of jogger traffic just to get to the hillside.  There was a  chill in the air and a light mist, fine for climbing up the slopes to the top but only made the climb down the stones a bit slippery. We're not sure what the yellow flower-y bushes were all along the hills, but they'll never be the same.

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We met Zach, a little black spaniel tearing around the heather or heath or wet grass, and his master who was walking the dog while his wife and daughter were running the race. His teen age boy was still in bed  (Heard THAT one before.)
    After the hike, we were about at the finish line wishing the participants well.  There was a quite unusual solution to the port-a-potty line situation.  The men were invited in to a cordoned off coral where there were single manly urinals to assure privacy.  In fact, I took a picture into the coral and didn't seen anything at all of interest.
    We had elevensies at Clarinda's tea room (Clarinda Agnes Maclehose 1759-1841, friend and mentor to Scotland's national poet, Robert Burns

and inspiration to his popular love song "Ae fond kiss." We shared our table with David, a well-traveled Brit up for a holiday. "I've been everywhere--ask me anything."

   We caught a Majestic double decker bus and had a tour of the city plus a trip to the Royal Britannia, the home to her Majesty, The Queen and royal family, sailing over 1,000,000 miles around the world. My father and Judd, both being mariners, it was a very interesting tour. You are given an audio tour device in your language of choice and when you get to a specific spot 1 or 2 or 19 etc, you push that number on your device to get the narration.  I can be done in a very timely manner, but Judd would tarry until I was three numbers ahead of him.  He remarked that the engineering systems were as many as the battleship Missouri that Judd worked on at Longreach Naval Shipyard. We had tea in their Royal Deck Tea room, my notes say Judd had the skink and I had carrot-coriander soup, but when I look up skink it comes up as a little green lizard. 
Google says: "Cullen skink is a thick Scottish soup made of smoked haddock, potatoes and onions. An authentic Cullen skink will use finnan haddie, but it may be prepared with any other smoked haddock."

Arthur's Seat overlooking Edinburgh

the finish line

slippery when wet

Tasteful, private urinals

 

the Royal bar