Editor’s Note: During the Scotland leg of our travels we visited three different places, all of which were originally published in a single installment which turned out to be quite lengthy. After review and finding a few too many typos, we elected to republish in three segments to make the read a bit more manageable for our followers. Apologies for any confusion this may cause.
One of the first bookings we made for “The Big Trip”, as it has come to be called by our families, was a hotel in the town of Port Ellen on the island of Islay, Scotland, which we booked in August of 2022. We had commitments from friends to meet us there on May 15, 2023 to celebrate Ritchard’s 64th birthday, so we felt it necessary to book well in advance in order to ensure accommodations together for our group. Port Ellen s a very small town on a very small island which was chosen for strategic purposes which I will explain a bit later.
With that piece in place, we went back and forth with our friends over the next few months and cobbled together an itinerary for a week together in Scotland. While we of course treasure all the one-on-one time travelling as a couple provides, we were looking forward to spending time with people whom we know and love in person rather than on the screen of a phone or laptop and doing things with a larger group.
We were also looking forward to shedding some of our baggage, including most of our cold weather clothing, as we had made arrangements to send back a suitcase full of “stuff” with two of our friends. (You may recall reading that we acquired a beautiful but large and heavy Murano glass light fixture in Italy as well as some ceramics and other items here and there which we had been carrying along with the rest of our luggage.) In anticipation of lightening our load, we purchased a small suitcase while in Denia, Spain which we planned on checking for our flight to Scotland. But, as we packed our bags in Denia, we came to the realization that the suitcase we had bought was not big enough for everything we ended up wanting to send home.
We were still uncertain how we would resolve this issue when we left Denia by bus on May 9th, bound for Valencia (beautiful scenery again!) where we had booked a motel near the airport to overnight before a flight to Edinburgh the next morning. Our motel in Valencia (the world famous Hotel M5) was pretty much everything you expect in a $45 per night hotel near the airport. The Hotel M5 is located in a very strange neighborhood, even by airport motel standards, which consisted almost entirely of large warehouse-size shops which dealt in a variety of imported goods – handbags, glad rags, and shoes amongst many other things, mostly from China, which they were clearly prepared to sell in bulk.
After checking into our hotel, we made a circuit of the neighborhood and pretty quickly found one shop that sold suitcases, but, oddly, only in pairs of two, with one inside the other. Eventually we found a shop that sold individual suitcases and, while we weren’t able to offer the smaller bag in trade-in, we purchased a larger bag at a very reasonable price and left the smaller bag at our hotel for use by another traveler. Mischief managed! (Sorry, but being in Scotland tends to put one in a very Harry Potter state of mind.)
Edinburgh
Our Scotland swing started in Edinburgh (which we eventually confirmed is correctly pronounced “Ed-in-bra”) where we arrived on Wednesday, May 10th. Our apartment in Edinburgh was a studio (which we have learned is Airbnb speak for one large room combining living, dining, and sleeping), but it was very large, well equipped, and quite comfortable with a full kitchen and living area where we could entertain guests if need be. You entered it through a building just off Princes Street then through a passageway, up two flights of stairs, through another passage, down a half flight of stairs (really) and miraculously found yourself in another building fronting on Princes Street with a wonderful view of the Scottish Museum, the Princes Street Gardens, and the Royal Mile of Old Town beyond.
Two of our friends, Greg and Kim, had arrived in Edinburgh from Dublin the day before and we met up with them for a delicious dinner at a place in Old Town called the Black Olive. Greg’s superhero power is finding amazing places to eat and drink and I am convinced that, in his next life, he will come back as a Concierge. The food was great and the wine was even better and we had a really enjoyable meal of catching up with good friends. (Greg and I became friends at the New Jersey Schools Construction Authority where we managed a lot of mischief together over the last 14 years.) We finished the evening with a night cap at an quirky little bar along the Royal Mile, coincidentally called The Inn on the Mile, which not only served drinks, but had 9 rooms to let if you were in a need.
We booked a walking tour of Old Town Edinburgh for the four of us the next morning which I think we all enjoyed very much. Our guide, a converted Australian, was extremely knowledgeable and wore a kilt with an awsome batman belt to boot. We wandered the streets and back alleys (called Closes here) of Old Town and heard some great stories from the history of Edinburgh, some of which even sounded like they might be true and most of them rife with blood and murder.
I should interject that that this was one of several “free” tours we have taken over the course of our travels. The concept of free tours, which we have really come to like, is that there is no set charge for the tour and, at the end, you tip your guide based on the value and quality of the tour. They are usually booked in advance on line through credible tour agencies (Guru Tours is one we see everywhere) and the guides are typically locals who have some qualifications (a lot of former history, literature, and drama students it seems) and training as tour guides.
It’s a great system as it really motivates your guide to provide a good tour with lots of interesting information and to endear themselves to you to ensure not only good tips, but also good online ratings. We’ve now found these on three continents and strongly recommend it as a way to find out about a new place when you arrive there.
The tour concluded in the Greyfriars Kirkyard (cemetery), where J.K. Rowling apparently spent a bit of time and pulled the names for many Harry Potter characters from tombstones there. We saw a cage which could be purchased to keep grave-robbers at bay and also learned that rich Scots are buried on the far west side of the cemetery because judgement day apparently starts in the east.
We strolled the streets of Grassmarket below the Castle and found a lunch spot (Cold Town Brewery) with a sunny roof deck and grabbed some sandwiches and drinks.
After a brief stop in the Harry Potter Shop on Grassmarket, we meandered back to Princes Street Garden, across from our apartment, a nice park which has some spectacular views of Edinburgh Castle which looms above it.
We had another great dinner that evening at a place called David Bann (another Greg find). It was one of those vegetarian restaurants where it doesn’t really matter if you’re vegetarian or not because everything is so delicious.
On Friday morning, Greg had booked us a tee time at Duddingston Gold Club, a local golf course, established in 1895, about a twenty minute drive from Old Town. When we had started planning this leg of our trip, we had aspirations of playing St. Andrew’s, the home of golf, but discovered it is impossible to book a single round of golf there short of participating in a lottery (or maybe murder). It rained a bit at the start of the round (it’s really not Scottish golf without some wind and rain) but then stopped and we had a really enjoyable morning. In my old life, Greg and I played golf together once or twice a week with an assortment of golf hooligans (including Greg’s dad), so it was really great being able to get in a round with him.
We spent Friday afternoon walking through an amazingly quaint neighborhood not far from Old Town called Dean Village. It’s one of those interesting places which seems lost in time. Unfortunately, Instagram has discovered it so it was a bit more crowded than we had hoped, but a nice walk nonetheless.
On our last full day in Edinburgh, we booked a tour of Edinburgh Castle which looms above the city and is visible from most parts of Old Town Edinburgh. We had another knowledgeable guide who regaled us with more stories of Edinburgh’s and Scotland’s bloody history, including stories of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, the real Braveheart (apparently Mel Gibson got it wrong). The Castle dates back to the 11th century and, over its history, has been expanded, destroyed, and rebuilt several times.
It was particularly interesting to hear about and see some of the renovations made to the Castle in the late nineteenth century by Queen Victoria to make it look more like what she thought a castle should look like. These included a new main gate and the restoration of the castle cannons which had been previously destroyed. The “new” cannons are apparently the wrong kind for a castle as they came from ships, but as they are now purely ornamental, it doesn’t really matter.
The highlight of the tour was definitely an old section of the Castle which served as a prison (think dungeon) for a number of centuries including during the American revolution when American prisoners of war were held there. The prison quarters were pretty retched but interesting to see nonetheless with old carvings and graffiti as well as a display of some pretty good forged currency and documents made by inmates as part of various escape attempts. Although we didn’t see them, some of the lower cells were reportedly open on the cliff side and were apparently the inspiration for George R.R. Martin’s sky cells in the Game of Thrones.
The view from the upper stronghold of the Castle is pretty spectacular and definitely worth the climb it takes to get there. You can see all of Old Town, down the Golden Mile and, even though it was a wee bit hazy, you could see north across the city to the north shore of the Forth of Firth.
Our friends Denny and Wendy arrived in Edinburgh that evening and we met for a glass of wine at our apartment before proceeding to have what might have been the best dinner yet, at a place called Le Piccolino, followed by drinks at the hotel where Denny and Wendy were staying.
Denny and I were college roommates for most of my years at Cincinnatti and he was the best man at our wedding. We’ve stayed pretty close with Denny and Wendy over the years and usually meet up once or twice a year, but it was still great meeting up with them after all of our travels thus far which made it seem like forever since we had last seen them.
Yoga in Edinburgh (Colleen’s Corner)
I was happy to find East Side Yoga in Edinburgh, just a brisk 15 minute walk from our apartment. I had the opportunity to join in on a Vinyasa Flow class which was lively and in a beautiful setting. However, the most interesting class I was able to join was called Functional Flow, which I had never heard of before. This class was slow paced with a focus on deep stretching, tissue release, mobility and strength building.
Most interesting within this class was the recommendation to hold some of the poses with our eyes closed. I found this to be challenging, but in a good way. Closing one’s eyes while sitting is one thing, but balancing on one leg with a twist in one’s spine is quite something else. I would have liked to take more classes with the enthusiastic and compassionate Sharon, but our itinerary dictated otherwise.
Burning the Inheritance 
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