Edinburgh

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In November of 1997 Kate was invited by her colleagues Martin and Moira Plant to a conference/meeting in Edinburgh. We flew into Heathrow London, visited with our Mom² and Dad² at "Winterset" in Woking before wending our way across the country up to the north and Edinburgh in Scotland. The picture at left is Edinburgh harbor -- click on the image for more photos.

It was an odd time to visit -- fall weather, a bit cool and damp with trees mostly having lost their leaves. It was well outside tourist season. Roger, our travel agent at the time, had arranged a coupon book that had us travelling through the country side staying at country inns of one sort or another. The package included dinner at the inns and breakfast in the morning. We had some very nice dinners and traditional English breakfasts in the morning. As it's off season often there would only be a few us there for our meals.

We'd never experienced an English breakfast before. It's mostly fried foods -- eggs (of course), some rashers of bacon, perhaps some blood sausage or bangers of some sort. Then mushrooms, tomatoes and even toast fried in the bacon drippings. I enjoyed them, Kate as a pescaterian, was not so keen on all the meats. She especially didn't like all the clicking of forks and knives on plates for those who pack their forks "English Style". When we met up with Martin and Moira we asked them if people really ate that kind of breakfast every day in the United Kingdom. Turns out they don't -- they have toast and jam with cereal and milk with perhaps a bit of fruit like the rest of us but load up on these high fat feasts for breakfast when they're on holidays. It's a "holiday" tradition to have a "traditional English breakfast."

Most of the inns were quite lovely, we were very pampered. There was on in an older hotel that had the fire escape for that floor through our room. Compromises were made to keep these older hotels in business.

We set out from Woking with the idea of seeing Cheddar Gorge (for the cheese), Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plain and foolishly believing we would be having a swim in the Roman Baths at Bath.