Here There and Everywhere

Expat wanderer

British Isles: Great Fun in Edinburgh

Early rising today as we are in Group 2 and meeting up at 7:45 am in the Star theatre to tender in to port to catch our bus. Whew! We had a quick breakfast – I am back to oatmeal now that the novelty of so much variety has worn off. We pack up our quiet boxes (it looks like hearing aids, but it allows the guide to speak to us as we are walking along without broadcasting to the world), our windbreakers, our phones, cameras and make sure we have everything we need.

They call our group quickly after group one (Group one is going to play golf at Saint Andrew’s; we are going on the panoramic tour of Edinburgh which is riding around in the bus about one hour looking at important things, then walking up the King’s Mile to the Edinburgh Castle. It is August, the month of the Tattoo, and the Castle has huge grandstands set up for people to come and watch this historical ceremony.


It is also the month of several festivals, so we are glad our bus is first out and full of people who are on time and board quickly. We have the streets to ourselves, shared only with the children and their backpacks headed to school. But look at the skies – so grimy! I try not to think about particulates and to breathe shallowly. 

The tour shows us all kinds of buildings – housing for rich and poor, schools, different architectural styles, different kinds of stone and decorations, statues of important men and homes of some of Edinburgh’s famous men. Edinburgh, and Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, give of thick Game of Thrones vibes to me. We park and hike up the hill to the castle, and the King’s Mile, where we are on our own for an hour and the crowds begin arriving. 

Below are the grandstands built to seat audiences for the Grand Tattoo. It gives me shivers and chills just to imagine sitting there.

You can see the same grandstands behind us.

We make a quick stop at the Castle Arms Pub, where they very kindly allow us to use their facilities, then we hike up to the castle, and down the King’s Mile. Then back up the King’s Mile, and we still have 15 minutes to spare so we head back to the Castle Arms Pub to have a coffee and an IRN-BRU (special Scottish soft drink) to thank them for allowing us to stop earlier. Our guide picks us up on the way back down the hill, and everyone going back to the boat is on time, again. We love traveling with Viking people. 

When we get back to the port, we decide to explore a little before heading back to the ship, so we look for the grocery store the guide has told us about to see a little of how the real Scots live, or at least where they shop. It is an Asda grocery, but once inside, it sure has the feel of a Walmart, with signs about price rollbacks and arrows, clothing racks and foods – its a supermarket, not unlike you would find in France or Spain or Pensacola. The goods are goods like we would buy in Pensacola. We just see one thing we know is genuinely Scottish:

When we get back to port, we board the tender and are back on the ship very shortly. It’s been another great day on this trip, bright sunshine, warm but temperate weather, zero complaints.

We both chose lunch from the noodle shop, broccoli and stir fried shrimp and mushrooms for both. And dessert, of course. Blueberry sorbet, and it is wonderful. 


We need a trip to the Nordic Spa, the bubbly hot wave pool down on the first deck, with a snow room, a steam room and lovely serene changing rooms with saunas. Sheer bliss.


We have unruly neighbors. This afternoon we hears thumps and screams amidst the shouting and arguing and finally AdventureMan called security and asked them to make a call to check on their well-being. It stopped for a while. It’s started up again.

We see the name Lothian on buses and small stores. AdventureMan tells me Lothian is the name of the lowland region that includes Edinburgh, lying between the southern shore of the Firth of Forth and the Lammermuir Hills and the Moorfoot Hills. So you take the high road and I’ll take the low road . . . . Firth is a cognate of fjord, a Norse word meaning a narrow inlet. Thank you, AdventureMan. Now we are leaving Edinburgh.

We would come back to Edinburgh again. There is so much history here we just skimmed over. The Romans. Hadrian’s Wall. We need to come back.

We’ve finished dinner, but we haven’t finished chatting, and there is a big block of something (?) floating off starboard side and people start rushing over to take a picture of the “iceberg.”

I have no idea what it really was, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an iceburg.

Sunset en route to Aberdeen

I haven’t said much about shopping. It’s because I haven’t shopped much. Our great quest on arrival in London was to find good cheese and good wine to have in our cabin. It thrills us to sit out on our balcony with good cheese and a nice glass of wine as we sail away.

Most of the trips we take are busy. These cruises are what you make of them. Some people are really laid back and mostly are on the trip for the cruise experience; they love the shows and on-board games and entertainment (there are better cruise lines for that.) One group on this trip is about golf, and another group is about visiting gardens, and they meet up at night and have great conversations, regaling one another with discoveries and anecdotes. Some love visiting wineries and distilleries at every port. My husband and I are mostly into history, early history for me, military history for my husband. We have lists of what we want to see and scurry to hit our priorities. It can be exhausting – and exhilarating. Shopping, however, gets tucked in where it can.

I found some cool Christmas gifts at the Canturbury Cathedral. I bought chocolate with Irish whiskey and a Celtic coffee mug in Dublin, more chocolate in Wales, and a tin of tea with a dragon on it! That’s about it so far. Some people came back from Edinburgh laden with shopping bags. Most of their shopping was gorgeous woolens, but I have woolens, and I live in Pensacola, Florida, where woolens are mostly irrelevant (and too itchy for me.) So we’re really not spending much. We ARE having a terrific time.

I wish we had another day at sea before Aberdeen; I need time to integrate all these new sights and ideas. No such luck! On one cruise, with several sea days, a friend of the ship’s captain told us that days-at-sea were a hardship for the ship’s crew, that the one thing that can cause big trouble is bored passengers. I can imagine! And I am a woman who needs time to ponder and to integrate!

January 1, 2026 Posted by | Adventure, Arts & Handicrafts, British Isles Viking Jupiter, Community, Cultural, Food, Shopping, Travel | , , , , , | Leave a comment