Edinburgh

We have a day in Edinburgh before needing to make our way to our ship and having been here twice in the last two years, today tried to find a couple of new/different things to do around the city.

First off, we thought we would take the train over to the “ other side”…. the other side being North Queensferry on the north of the Firth of Forth rail bridge. This meant that we got to travel over the bridge, having sailed underneath it last autumn. It’s an impressive structure and I’m amazed to report that we didn’t see anyone painting it…perhaps they have indeed completed that task. North Queensferry itself is nothing special, just a few little houses and a couple of hotels that looked well past any hope of renovation. There was, however, a little lighthouse which advertised itself as “the world’s smallest working Light Tower by Robert Stevenson”. Hopefully you can see just how small it was in the picture below.

We then returned to the city centre thereby completing a double crossing. 

Our second different thing to do was to visit the cutting edge exhibition at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh museum. As well as being eligible for the senior citizens entrance fee, the fact that the ticket stated “The museum displays human remains that some people may find unsettling” was stating the bleeding obvious, but it was a fascinating journey around all aspects of the human body which we both took to heart. Claire was particularly interested in the dental surgery through the ages exhibition hall, noting that she had used the orthodontics charts which were stated as appearing in the latter part of the 20th century. I suggested that the exhibition might benefit from an appearance of a dental nurse from the latter part of the 20th century too, but that didn’t go down particularly well. Unfortunately in the museum, all photography was banned and I didn’t have to guts to argue.

No visit to Edinburgh can be called complete without a quick visit to Victoria Street and its Harry Potter connotations, and up to the Castle itself. So we called our visit complete. Almost. To fully tick all the boxes we had a pre dinner drink in the whisky bar at the famous Balmoral Hotel.

So we are now back at our hotel and ready to sleep well after all our walking and sightseeing. Bags will be repacked where needed and then it’s off on the train in the morning to embark our exploration ship. More to follow on the basis that the ship’s Wi-Fi connection works!