The Ryan's on the road.: Edinburgh and London

After 5 wonderful nights in Paris it was time to say good-bye and head for the UK. Not such an easy task when you need to be at the airport at 6:30AM during a transport strike – and there’s 8 of you! We figured it out and in no time found ourselves in Edinburgh, the feeling was surreal, after 16 years we’re back … and not much has changed, on the surface! We bid farewell to Mum and Dad for now, as they head to Glasgow to visit with friends. We, on the other hand, navigated our way easily in to Waverley Station and up the hill to The Mile and our apartment.

We only had 2 nights in Edinburgh, so we didn’t waste anytime getting out and seeing the sights. Nor did Andrew wasted any time trying to track down an old mate.

Luckily Edinburgh is a relatively small city and sights are not far – our feet got us around all the sights we wanted to show the girls – The Castle, The Grassmarket, Hollyroad Palace, Carlton Hill, Princess Street and the New Town and many sights in between. We stubbled across an old cemetery, which captured all of our imaginations. I’m always surprised by how much you can discover in a cemetery and what questions it raises. As we read headstone after headstone we noticed a pattern of young children in the 1700’s dying young, which lead us to read up on Edinburgh’s history of the time. What a tough time it was – overcrowded, 5 and 7 stories buildings (enormous for the time) – with wooden shacks on top for extra living space – and death and disease everywhere. Adults appeared to live on but many families seemed to lose multiple children before they were teenagers. It must have been a very dark and tough time in what is such a glorious place now.

Meanwhile on the sideline Andrew was on his own quest of discovery – tracking down Duncan! The only logical way seemed to be a pub crawl! We started at our old favourite, The Last Drop, no luck. I did have to remind Andrew that is was 21 years ago that Duncan worked there and we were patrons! His detective work took him from drinking hole to drinking hole until finally one knew of his current workplace. A phone call and a message passed on and BINGO! The only downside was Duncan was out of town and we were almost out of time. We managed to fit in breakfast (at the café where Harry Potter is alledged to have been written) followed by a couple of pre lunch pints before our train to London. It was like no time had passed, picking up where we left off 16 years ago (our last visit to Edinburgh) – and then it was time to go. Sad as it was, we were so relived we’d caught up, all of us wondered where and when the next meeting will be.

The train to London was fast and uneventful. It was a cold, miserable day so looking outside wasn’t as interesting as I thought it might have been. Luckily we nabbed a table and we played cards and stretched out a bit. The train got busier as we got closer to London, until we found ourselves back in the hustle and bustle of the London Tube. Again, on the surface nothing much has changed! Having lived here for a few years we negotiated our way to West Kensington without any trouble and hauled our bags up the 3 flights of stairs to our 3 bedroom apartment – a palace in comparison to the apartment we once lived in around here.

We had 4 days to explore London and we didn’t waste anytime getting on with it. After Paris and the difficulties of getting around without a subway, London was a breeze. We felt spoilt!

In our time in London we saw Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guards, St James’ Park (and our first squirrel sighting), Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Soho, Covent Garden, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben (well we looked at the scaffold as least ☹) and the Houses of Parliament, The London Eye (it was closed indefinitely for repairs – or a land dispute, not sure which one is true), Downing Street, Regent Street, Oxford, Street, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens and Palace, Queens Tennis Club, Harrods, The M&M and Lego stores, The Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Shakespeare’s Globe, Hampstead Heath, Portobello Market, Evensong at Westminster Abbey (stunning) and lots of places in between. Gosh we packed a lot in – the girls just loved it and we loved being back in our old stomping ground – we showed the girls two of our West Ken flats and our old local – The Three Kings. It feels like a different lifetime now.