Our second taxi ride was last night. Yesterday was a good day but a hard one. The elements and our own exhaustion were working against us, but I was determined to keep us going until after dinner, at least. You can't lose a whole day to jet lag, can you? We landed on time, but sadly, Andy's luggage was lost, so that slowed us down some. Our biggest deterrent yesterday was the terrible rain. We were headed to the Royal Mile, the heart of Edinburgh's Old Town sights. We had the intent of doing some sight seeing and then going to church, but the rain was fierce, leaving fast moving streams pouring down the famous mile's cobblestone streets. Even the inside of my purse got soaked, though that has more to do with the fact that I left it open then anything. We did our best to stay dry. We ducked into a shop, then a covered alleyway, and finally a cafe. We'd wait for the rain to let up, but each time we'd step back out, it would pick up again, like some cruel, orchestrated monsoon aimed to get rid of tourists. We were miserable. We finally found the Catholic Church, St. Patrick's, so that gave us a good hour of respite from the rain, but poor Andy was so jet lagged by then that his head bobbed through Mass so often that I was just waiting for him to crumple in a heap on the oak pew.
Here's what happens to umbrellas in an Edinburgh rain:
Of course, the antedote to all this misery is a warm pub and a cool pint, so we headed to the World's End after Mass--our souls were safe, so we could risk a little Armageddon. Andy and I had a pint--okay, Andy had about an eighth of a pint--and we had some good pub grub: fish and chips, black pudding end goat cheese, hot butternut squash soup, and a big burger. The pub was great: lots of interesting flags and photos on the wall, a noisy but friendly clientele, and fellow patrons who were happy to help us order.
The pints are props here!
I don't know if it was the food or the pub that cheered us up, but our time out of the rain made us feel like we could actually do one last bit of sightseeing. And, alleluia, the rain had ended. We walked up the Royal Mile to its western terminus to see the dramatic Edinburgh Castle. The castle seems to simply grow out of the craggy black volcanic rock it's perched upon. It seems like a place designed to be haunted. Rain or no rain, the high imposing imposing structure seems like it should be shrouded in dark clouds and struck by the occasional lightening bolt. Of course, the wild flowers blooming in the black rock soften its ghostly edges.
All this brings me to cabbie number two. We'd walked the thirty or forty minute stretch from our rooms at the University of Edinburgh to The Royal Mile earlier that day, but the walk home would have resulted in elder abuse: Andy and Maria would have beaten me silly. We hopped in a taxi on High Street, and I made the mistake of saying that this was our first stop "in the UK." The driver must have known it was his duty as a Scot to set me straight by telling us emphatically that we should never speak of England and Scotland in the same breath let alone the same Kingdom. Furthermore, "Scotland is so much friendlier then London," he said. "in London, they're terribly arrogant.". I don't think he could understand why we'd willingly choose to leave Edinburgh, but then I told him we were working our way up to Paris, and he decided that the natural progression in arrogance from Edinburgh to London to Paris was perfect. To go from Edinburgh to Paris would clearly be too big a shock to anybody's system. He was a nice guy, and he safely delivered us to our dorm. So Edinburgh gets high points for friendly cabbies; they kept us dry, they helped us find our way around, and entertained us. Not bad for a few pounds.
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