Sorry for the delay between posts – apparently life gets in the way sometimes!
July 1 & 2, 2024 (Day 12 & 13): At Sea and Edinburgh, Scotland
There really wasn’t much to write about yesterday – we were very grateful for a day to stay on board and nurse our colds. We also found out that most of the ship is sick. We had been coming to that conclusion already based on the amount of coughing we heard both around the ship and on buses, but yesterday was the day that our stateroom attendant left a note on top of the empty tissue box letting us know that they were out. As in, the entire ship had run out of tissues. I no longer feel guilty for potentially spreading my cold. I now blame the rest of the ship for giving it to me. We did dress up for the formal dinner night, which was also fun, but were so tired, that we went straight to bed after dinner.
And then came today! Edinburgh! So, this is probably one of the stops we’d been looking forward to the most – because Daniel’s great-grandmother grew up there! She came to the States after she had her second child, therefore making sure that I got to meet and marry Daniel eventually. 😀
But, okay – so apparently this is the first time Celebrity had done a stop in Edinburgh…and it did not go well. It was another tendering stop and let’s just say it this way: if it hadn’t been for a concierge we befriended, we would never have made our tour on time (it was booked through a third party, not the ship). He got us onto a priority tender rather than us having to wait in the normal lines – it took 20-ish minutes to get to shore, then it was a half hour bus ride (which was only that short because the bus could take the bus lanes – traffic was basically standstill) into the city and another half hour walk to where we were meeting our tour guide. There were supposed to be 12 people on the tour. Only four of us made it on time. Two more joined us part way through and the rest never showed up. I heard stories of people who had to wait so long for a tender, they only got 45 minutes in Edinburgh before they had to turn around to go back.
It was a nice bus ride with pretty scenery, but the city itself was amazing! It was cold, rainy, and windy, but so worth being cold on that tour. You could feel the age looking at the buildings, and yet they all still came across as sturdy and almost romantic. But the building that caught your eye and kept it was, of course, the Edinburgh Castle. Built on top of a former volcano, the origins of the fortress was built so long ago they can’t pinpoint an exact date, the castle is visible from everywhere, and is truly awe-inspiring. Our tour guide told us story after story of battles and kings and queens and pointed out the window to the room where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to her son.
We traipsed all over the city, up and down hills, looking at buildings that were hundreds of years old, and learning about closes, which were basically narrow alleys to access homes and courtyards. More than once she pulled out her phone to show us pictures of how the place we were standing used to look so we could compare – there was often surprisingly little difference! In one case, she pointed to our feet and said that we were standing where someone’s house used to be. I was utterly delighted to see a WRITER’S MUSEUM – and equally sad that I couldn’t go in since, you know, we were in the middle of a tour. She also brought us to a parking lot that was BUILT OVER GRAVES! One of the parking spots was over the gravesite of John Knox.
Our tour ended at 1:00 PM. The last bus left Edinburgh at 2:00 PM to get us to the boat in time for the last tender at 3:00 PM. But we had one more thing to do. We hurried through the city, including some very questionable areas, to reach the below street.
Because this is the exact street – almost exact location – that Daniel’s great-grandmother grew up on! We took a picture of her autobiography next to it, which has a picture of the same clock!
We dashed into a shop to buy a couple souvenirs and a box of tissues and made the almost 30 minute walk to the bus in about 15 minutes. Where the line was so long it took us walking halfway up it to realize it was the line for our bus. We were waiting in that line for probably half an hour and barely squeezed onto a bus. And then, when we finally made it back to the port, we saw THE LINE. It was nothing compared to the line for the bus. Because basically every single person who got off the ship came back for the last 3:00 tender. Well, we took one look at that line, and headed for the restaurant across the street. We got a couple drinks and chatted with another couple from the ship as we all watched through a window as the line slogged by over the next hour. When we saw the last of the line, we hurried out and joined it – only to realize there was another entire long line still merging from the other side! We didn’t have to wait in that, thankfully, since we were joining the short line, and only had to wait another 15 or 20 minutes to get on the tender. We found out later that some people stood in that line in the cold for two hours. TWO random people we talked to said the people they were traveling with caught colds waiting in that line (don’t ask me how they had managed to avoid it up to that point).
As for us, we did our customary after-a-tour activity – happily letting the hot tub warm us up as we watched the beautiful countryside go by.
Forest Idylls 