About an hour before landing, they served some tea/coffee/soft drinks and offered some banana bread that was non-vegan. I took the tea but Sahana slept through it. The pilot had made good time, so we touched down in Edinburgh about 20-25 min ahead of time (butter-smooth landing!).
Immigration was very smooth with no interaction with humans but we had to wait a very, very long time for our luggage to arrive. We headed out and looked for the tram station. There are multiple options to get to the downtown area (about 35-45 min away) like bus, tram, train and cab.
We bought tickets for the tram and got on to one that was ready to leave. Thankfully, we got a couple of empty seats, so we could sit down. We realized later that the tram gets very crowded, so it wouldn't have been easy for us to stand for such a long time in our sleep-deprived state.
We got off at the Haymarket station and tried to orient ourselves so we could walk to our hotel which was supposed to be only about a 10 min walk. As usual, Google Maps and Apple Maps were confused about which direction we were pointing, so we initially headed down the wrong way and then had to trace our way back, all this while lugging 3 suitcases. It took us almost 30 min to reach our hotel because, as we realized later, I missed a turn somewhere, so we took a really long route to our hotel. We were already very tired when we reached the hotel on top of being sleep-deprived.
Thankfully, the hotel staff told us that they had a room available for early check-in, so we got our keys and headed up to our room to freshen up before heading out. The room turned out to be a typical, European-style matchbox of a room with barely enough room to keep three closed suitcases. But, Sahana found a way to organize them so we could at least open one of them at a time when needed. We had a shower in a super-tiny bathroom and then headed out for some breakfast and later, Hollyrood Palace & Arthur's Seat.
We found a place called Braw Brunch where they had vegan cinnamon rolls and coffee with non-dairy options. Unfortunately, they had only one vegan roll remaining, so we ordered that and two coffees. The staff was super friendly and pleasant to talk to.
It was a long-ish walk to Hollyrood Palace and we had to walk through the Royal Mile to get there. The Royal Mile is this super busy stretch of walkable road where there's buskers, street entertainers and a huge throng of tourists just walking around. It's got a very festive atmosphere. Later, we found out that it's the last few days of a festival called The Fringe. The Fringe along with the Edinburgh International Festival is the third highest globally ticketed event in the world after the Olympics and the World Cup!
We slowly made our way through the crowds and the streets of Edinburgh Old Town till we reached the Hollyrood Palace around 1pm. We showed our tickets and picked up the multimedia sets for the self-guided tour. This took the better part of 90 min but it was very interesting to see how the Scottish/British royals lived way back in the 16th & 17th centuries. It's still used today by the British royals as a summer residence. After visiting the palace, we went to see the Abbey (or what remains of it) and then walked through the garden.
We exited Hollyrood Palace and made our way towards the path that leads to Arthur's Seat. From where we were, Arthur's Seat looked impossibly high and I was ready to quit right there but I saw so many people walking up that I decided that we should try going as far as we could. It starts off as a paved path but quickly turns into a rough path of gravel/stones/pebbles and mud. People walk wherever it's convenient and sometimes, you have to figure out which way suits you best. Sometimes, you may want to take the gradual incline with stones/gravel/mud but just next to it, there will be some steep/high steps. The other major challenge is just the degree of incline. It's equivalent to a 10:1 on the treadmill but at the same time, it's also relentless. There's hardly a point at which the ground levels off.
Anyway, we kept taking breaks to catch our breath, for drinking water and once, for half a protein bar each. There's a mini-summit at which there's a broad flat area where people take some rest and admire the view. Some people give up at that point and head back because the short stretch from here to the peak becomes more treacherous. The pebbles turn into big, loose rocks and there's no discernible path or trail anymore. Each person has to just identify footholds that look secure enough and make their way to the top. And, because these rocks are loosely strewn about, the footing is less secure when you're going down. This worried both Sahana and me a lot.
At this point, we kept thinking we should stop and head back and then we would change our mind and take a few steps up. We kept doing that till we finally reached the top. There were two "peaks" where there were a couple of pyramidal blocks placed to signify the peak(s). We chose one of them that seemed to be slightly higher than the other and found a place to sit and take rest and the obligatory pics! Also, we wanted to stop our brains from worrying about going back down through those rocks!
On the way back down, because there was no clear trail among the rocks, we ended up not joining the trail that we originally climbed up on. Instead, we appeared to be on some semi-trail that was about 10ft below the actual trail and there was no clear way to get back to the actual trail. Then, we noticed that, from our trail, we could actually find our way down to some wide flat meadow that slowly descended back in parallel to the trail and it looked a lot simpler/safer than the pebble/gravel-strewn one that we had climbed up on. There were a few people on that meadow also walking down, so we thought we would just follow them. This made our lives a lot easier.
About halfway down the slope, we met a local who was walking his dog. He seemed very friendly and advised us to turn and continue on a different path down the slope to a paved trail that ran around the base of the mountain. That would take us back to the parking lot where we started. We would end up walking for about 15 min longer but the views would be much better and the path would not be as perilous as the original one. So, we thanked him and took the path he recommended. Big mistake, as it turned out. We don't know if he was underestimating the distance or if we didn't follow his advice properly, but the paved path ended up being an extremely long, winding way to get back to our starting point. Think of it as doing 330 deg around a circle instead of doing the other 30 deg. By the time we hit the paved path itself, Sahana was limping because her hip was hurting and my feet were killing me and my ankle had begun to hurt (again!). And, the paved path refused to end. We kept walking and passing people and we would keep asking them if the path led to the parking lot and they would say yes, but that it would be quite a long distance. We kept trying to keep each other's spirits up but at a certain point (we were quite close to the parking lot by then, I think), we just gave up. We decided to call an Uber and go back to the hotel room.
Our earlier plan had been to walk to a place called Soul Vegan for dinner. But, now that we were heading back to the hotel, we had to come up with an alternate plan. We decided to try ordering from Soul Vegan using Doordash. Doordash has partnered with a local company called Deliveroo, so we ordered some food (Singapore Fried Noodles with tofu, spring rolls, fries) through them and had it delivered to our room. Food was very tasty.
Our overall opinion, so far, of Scottish locals is that they're super friendly and nice to talk to. They're always willing to help strangers and visitors out. As we found out later from an Indian cab driver, their economy thrives mainly on tourism and foreign students, so it benefits them to be very nice to tourists! But, I still think that they're just super nice people, in general.
No comments:
Post a Comment