30,000 Steps

Burial ground -Parish Church of St. Cuthbert, Princes Street, Edinburgh

Today was fuelled by a good night's sleep, and breakfast at Pep and Fodder, just down the street from the hotel.

I'd booked us a bus tour of the city - which covered the Old Town, the New Town, Dean Village, Holyrood and a bunch of other stuff.

The tour was to help us get our bearings, which it did and didn't do in that it honed our ambition to see things we had not heard of, like Dean Village, but challenged our old-people's memories, so I forgot the "Dean Village" part in my phone map direction-finding, and we went on a merry chase some five kilometres out of our way.

But, Edinburgh's a really small place. Even when you get completely lost - which we did - it's a half hour's walk to where you should be. And we saw some pretty cool stuff along the way.  Such as:

St. Bernard's Mineral Well

This is a statue of Hygeia, the greek goddess of health, though Bruce thought she might be Hebe (Zeus's cup bearer). She stands over a small pump room that apparently you can go into some times of the year, and where Edinburgers used to go to drink the sulphur-smelling water.

The small river that runs through Edinburgh is called the Water of Leith, and there is a pretty walkway along it, which we found by accident. Then we found Hygeia. Then, I tripped on the stone stairs leading up from St. Bernard's Mineral Well, and I dropped my camera. It broke into a bunch of pieces.

When we got back to our hotel, I put the pieces back together. The camera still works.

We went to the Royal Mile, too, just to say we did it. And saw the dog statue.

We've been in Edinburgh only two days, but I am prepared to make some observations:

• Scots don't understand cole slaw. I had it at two different places on our first day and won't ask for it again. Bleh.
• Scots are few and far between in Edinburgh. The guy who drove us in from the airport: Polish. The woman who drove our bus around this morning: Spanish. The young man who served us lunch: Hungarian. 
• Haggis is like sloppy joes without the tomato sauce. Neeps and tatties are like baby food for grown ups.

Tomorrow we're doing a walking tour and then will likely hike some more. Another 30K steps.

Bruce with the castle coming out of his head.

Thanks for reading!

Karen