Floyd had a floating recording studio that we saw just down the river. Our whistle stop visit to London concluded with another one eleven bus back to Heathrow for an uneventful BMI flight to Edinburgh. In fact the most interesting moment was when we found that they had managed to attach our security photos around the wrong way when checking in... much to the amusement of the security staff (who see this happen all the time). We once again took a double decker bus from the airport, this time we had the added amusement of being able to point out all the street signs with the same names as those streets back in Dunedin on the way into the middle of Edinburgh. We dropped our gear off at the hostel, made the obligatory introductions to the others in our 8 bed dorm and then set out to explore some of the cool areas of this very cool city. We managed to wander past the acclaimed Mary King Close tour company - but because this was all booked up we went with one of the slightly less acclaimed but numerous other underground city tours. The super summarised version is that the city used to be enclosed within a defensive wall, then when the population exploded the vaults in the bridges to the outside became enclosed by large buildings up to 16 stories high. Our tour went into the newly 'opened' vaults of the south bridge and (presumably to boost ticket sales) the guide makes it into a ghost story by talking about murders, crimes and the south bridge entity the whole 1 1/4 hours. Maybe not worth the 8 pound each - but the bits of history and the inside views of the bridge were pretty cool really. Interestingly, they didn't allow for toilets. So every night at 10pm they'd open their windows yell "guard a leu" which means look out and throw it out the window - where it stayed and built up over the years.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Scotland (21st July)
We were pretty run down from the travel and lack of sleep from the last few nights - so a nice lie in on the river was well received... pretty awesome to have a room with ensuite to ourselves for the first time on the trip too. Seemed pretty bizarre to be using Wifi on a boat - but this is 2009 after all and we were able to use the time to book a couple of very exciting events for when we come back to London in a week or so (stay turned for what these are). We went for a quick wander around this small private island and some of the locals were more than willing to give us some stories about the people that have lived here, Charlie Chaplan for a period of time and Pink 
Floyd had a floating recording studio that we saw just down the river. Our whistle stop visit to London concluded with another one eleven bus back to Heathrow for an uneventful BMI flight to Edinburgh. In fact the most interesting moment was when we found that they had managed to attach our security photos around the wrong way when checking in... much to the amusement of the security staff (who see this happen all the time). We once again took a double decker bus from the airport, this time we had the added amusement of being able to point out all the street signs with the same names as those streets back in Dunedin on the way into the middle of Edinburgh. We dropped our gear off at the hostel, made the obligatory introductions to the others in our 8 bed dorm and then set out to explore some of the cool areas of this very cool city. We managed to wander past the acclaimed Mary King Close tour company - but because this was all booked up we went with one of the slightly less acclaimed but numerous other underground city tours. The super summarised version is that the city used to be enclosed within a defensive wall, then when the population exploded the vaults in the bridges to the outside became enclosed by large buildings up to 16 stories high. Our tour went into the newly 'opened' vaults of the south bridge and (presumably to boost ticket sales) the guide makes it into a ghost story by talking about murders, crimes and the south bridge entity the whole 1 1/4 hours. Maybe not worth the 8 pound each - but the bits of history and the inside views of the bridge were pretty cool really. Interestingly, they didn't allow for toilets. So every night at 10pm they'd open their windows yell "guard a leu" which means look out and throw it out the window - where it stayed and built up over the years.
Floyd had a floating recording studio that we saw just down the river. Our whistle stop visit to London concluded with another one eleven bus back to Heathrow for an uneventful BMI flight to Edinburgh. In fact the most interesting moment was when we found that they had managed to attach our security photos around the wrong way when checking in... much to the amusement of the security staff (who see this happen all the time). We once again took a double decker bus from the airport, this time we had the added amusement of being able to point out all the street signs with the same names as those streets back in Dunedin on the way into the middle of Edinburgh. We dropped our gear off at the hostel, made the obligatory introductions to the others in our 8 bed dorm and then set out to explore some of the cool areas of this very cool city. We managed to wander past the acclaimed Mary King Close tour company - but because this was all booked up we went with one of the slightly less acclaimed but numerous other underground city tours. The super summarised version is that the city used to be enclosed within a defensive wall, then when the population exploded the vaults in the bridges to the outside became enclosed by large buildings up to 16 stories high. Our tour went into the newly 'opened' vaults of the south bridge and (presumably to boost ticket sales) the guide makes it into a ghost story by talking about murders, crimes and the south bridge entity the whole 1 1/4 hours. Maybe not worth the 8 pound each - but the bits of history and the inside views of the bridge were pretty cool really. Interestingly, they didn't allow for toilets. So every night at 10pm they'd open their windows yell "guard a leu" which means look out and throw it out the window - where it stayed and built up over the years.
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I REALLY like Edinburgh - though it is disconcerting to keep finding streets with familiar names that are so unfamiliar!
ReplyDeleteIt all sounds fun!
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