Day 9

Stirling woke to overcast grey skies. We must be back in England. It’s spitting rain. At least it’s cool outside, the hostel is overheated. Did I mention that before. I sleep with the doona mostly off.
The shower that had filled me with the dead of 3rd degree burns proved to be just great. You got 60 secs of great warm water. It then stopped. I gather that gave you time to lather your bits, then press the button and another 60 secs to wash off the lather. All in all quite satisfactory, but nowhere any instructions.
The William Wallace Memorial beckons after breakfast, so we’re off. We are too early, it is not open so it’s a picture from the car park and to Edinburgh we go.
This time we get Billy confused, as we want him to go to Edinburgh and he wants to go to Leith. Turns out it’s all the same place, sort of.
We finally get to the youth hostel. Then the desperate search for parking. As luck would have it there’s one right outside and it’s good for 9 hours. That takes us into tomorrow when we head off to Ireland.
We take to foot, walking up Leith Street, past the Playhouse Theatre which is playing “Spamalot”, past Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s statute, past the Duke of Wellington’s statue, across North Bridge and up the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle.
These damn cities are all the same, cutesier cobblestoned streets with cutesier houses and shops and old churches and public buildings.
I must say the castle is pretty impressive and we spend about three hours there plodding around from exhibit to exhibit, room to room etc.
Lunch is at the castle served by a lad from Melbourne.
Then it’s off to see the 1 o’clock gun fired. By my watch he was a bit late, though it was impressive. I’ll post it on YouTube when I have better access, probably in Canada.
We had to stand on some cannon balls to get a observation point as all the tourists were blocking the view.
The view from the castle is something else, across Edinburgh to the Firth of Forth, or the Fourth of Fifth or something like that. It is a walking city as most of the interesting stuff is in walking distance of the centre of town.
We do a lot of browsing. I am looking for a kilt, however can’t find one I like. I do actually, it is the right tartan, especially for a tart like me, yet the cloth feels harsh and I’m a softy underneath.
According to the guy in the shop 90% of all tartan and kilt shops are owned by only 2 Indians and the cloth is all imported.
I note his kilts were labelled “Designed in Scotland”. Anyway no kilt.
We wend our way down the Royal Mile, gawking, just like tourists, then head for the YHA to book in.
We are served by Salvatore, with the thickest Scots accent. Our room overlooks our car so we can see it being stolen through the night-perfect.
The hostel is modern clean and rather sterile. Hang on Stirling was like that too.
There is no one about. Perhaps it is too up-market for back-packers.
I buy some internet time so I can get these journals off, which I manage.
I then do a superbly stupid thing. Absolutely stunning in its brainlessness. I manage to lock myself out from my bank accounts. I had fixed in my mind I was putting in the wrong account number, it didn’t cross my mind that I was using the wrong password, so I dutifully put in the password for another account three times, and that as they say was that. CRAP. The mind is wondrous and terrifying thing, well mine is at least.
With this triumph fresh on my mind we head off to the local Italian Restaurant as the suggestion of Sal, and have a very reasonable meal of pasta using much of our remaining Pounds.
Back to the hostel where a bus load of ?Germans has arrived with backpacks, suitcases etc taking up the lift and the stairs.
Sleep is difficult as the side street is the main thoroughfare for all of Scotland’s buses and truck who grind up the street all night. The double glazing is not successful in drowning them out, even if you could close the window fully.