England and Scotland for Dad's 70th
Day 9 - Friday - England/Scotland
I awake to an obscenely LOUD alarm set by Dad, who
thinks it sounds
just fine. Ow.
I was dying to take a bath in that gloriously huge
bathtub all sparkly
and with an assortment of lovely flowery English soaps, but there
wasn't
time. Mary was down in the kitchen whipping up our "full English
breakfast" and the taxi would arrive in less than an hour.
Breakfast opened with a really sweet honey and nut
(whole pecans)
cereal, and was followed with fried eggs, Canadian bacon, grilled
tomato, toast and marmalade. And, of course, tea. During
the cereal portion, Mary suggested I call to confirm our taxi (not her
choice of taxi service, I was sensing) and the voice on the other end
of the phone confirmed our call, sounding a little impatient and put
off. Ooookay... Mary sat with us and chatted about her
town, her RSC and stage career, her good friend Nigel Hawthorne with
whom she has acted and still sees ("Hollywood treated him
abominably! He should have won the Academy Award for Madness of
King George! He and Trevor have lived in a nice quiet home
for 8
years, never bother anyone, and they drug out that business of him
being gay just to sabotage his Oscar chance-"). She gave me a
copy of her book of poetry, and Dad mentioned his concern about the
taxi -- it's 7:20 (our train leaves at 7:35).
What??? I
call them again, this time the annoyed voice saying he should have been
there by now. Mary calls her own company, just to be on the safe
side, and tells them we need their available driver "straight
away!" At this point, I'm hoping hers wins and we get out of
there before ours shows up.
So hers shows up, we leap in, thinking we're going
to take off without
meeting the other one, and our driver just sits there, looking in his
rear view mirror with some anger or suspicion or competition or all
three in his eyes. I look back to see the other taxi pulling up
behind us. Dad and I wait for our driver to pull ahead, but
nooooooo, he backs up and turns the car around in the middle of the
street so he can look the other driver in the eye as he pulls
away. Whew...
We get to the train station with no other stand-offs
and our train is
patiently waiting for us (it probably takes like 8 minutes to drive
across the entire town). So we ride to Birmingham, change
stations (it seems like a shorter walk, knowing how far we're walking
this time), and kill some time in the W.H. Smith stores looking over
candies and magazines.
We leave with fabulous window seats and a variety of
fellow passengers
sitting near us -- an older woman and her son, two teenage girls
playing
two-handed solitaire, and a Scottish woman and her little Mary Kate
& Ashley post-toddler Ellie, who had the run of the car, amusing
and terrorizing everyone with her lethally sticky lollipop.
The view is depressing me to no end. It's
supposed to get more
and more beautiful the more north you go in England (especially when
you take the direct London-to-Edinburgh route along the ocean), but
this route was going west of all places (sometimes north, other times
northwest) and dragging us through Manchester and equally non-floral
communities. We finally pass Preston and begin to enter the Lake
District, offering Dad some semi-scenic (okay, it's beautiful but still
not what I'm looking for) views. I'm STARVING!
We pull into the Edinburgh train station (yea!!!)
and have to kill a
couple of hours before going to Rod and Rhona's (she's running errands,
looking for us after 5). Our suitcases are getting heavier, the
stairs leading up into town are getting longer and higher, and we
finally walk out onto Princes Street. We go into the tourist
center and I book two tickets for the tour bus. Next, do we walk
to our right down the street to Burger King for a snack or left to the
tour bus? Dad points out we don't have that much time to kill
before going to Rod and Rhona's, so we drag our suitcases across a busy
street and pile them onto the upper deck of the tour bus and take in
the town.
It's a good tour -- we go from top to bottom of the
Royal Mile, seeing
Edinburgh Castle at the top and Holyrood Palace at the bottom.
(Holyrood Palace is closed, thanks to some Royal family people being
there, but they'll be gone Monday, should we choose to visit.) We
also go waaaay up on some high street and enjoy looking down on the
beautiful yellow flower covered Arthur's Seat mountain over the town
view. And, of course, the statue of the Greyfriar's Bobby (the
little dog who sat vigil over his owner's grave for the rest of his
little canine life). Our tour guide also pointed out the hotel
where her hero and Edinburgh native, Sean Connery, was given the key to
the city.
We take a taxi to Rod and Rhona's house, where Rhona
happily greets us
at the door and shows us our choice of bedrooms. (The back of their
house has this incredible view of the firth -- sort of a Scottish
pseudo-bay -- that I stared at from their bathroom window during
previous visits, never having access to their son Christopher's
room. Our choice is between Christopher's room and Jonathon's
room. It's Dad's birthday, he gets Christopher's room.) We
chat away while she effortlessly makes tea and sets out a plate of
chocolate cake. More chatting, she leaves to work on dinner in
the kitchen, and Dad and I rip apart the last piece of cake before Rod
comes in from work. We sit down to a fabulous dinner, fish pie
and redcurrant cheesecake dessert, followed by coffee and loads of
conversation. Then Dad left with Rod to put petrol in their car
before our big trip tomorrow (yea!!!).
England and
Scotland for Dad's 70th
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