Spent a lovely day across in Edinburgh on Wednesday with an aim to walk up Arthur's Seat with the family on a lovely sunny day. Traffic from Glasgow to Edinburgh on the M8 was noticeably lighter at mid-day than 'normal', albeit with fairly normal levels of HGV traffic. Got to love being stuck behind one speed-limited HGV travelling 64 in the outside lane passing another one travelling 59 in the inside lane.
Being my first driving trip to Edinburgh in about 7 years, the various changes to the road layouts in the city centre are pretty confusing. SatNav helped a bit, and we got to where we wanted to go eventually and parked up in the public car park adjacent to Arthur's Seat. £4 for the day seemed reasonable enough. Good walk, slightly tricky for a largely urban 10 year old and a fearless but not really 5 year old. Picnic snack short of the main peak and then turned around as it was clear the 10 year old was up for the summit dash whilst Mrs and the five year old were not.
Modest walk back up Canongate towards the Royal Mile hoping for an open ice cream shop. Nothing much open, and to be honest no real need to be as the tourists are simply not there. Lovely but modestly pricing gelato from Smoov (£12 for four people), but worth the walk. Significant entertainment on the walk back from a drunk/high/mentally ill Frenchman standing in the middle of the road shouting something in French which we think translated to 'With the sun out like this, its just like France'. We think. He might also have been saying 'I'm French, I'm in the sun, who wants some'. Mrs. and the 10 year old found it all very amusing. The five year old just kept commenting on the stupid man in the road which caused me to hurry along before we fully understood the translation and Daddy got some.
Decided to finish up the day by parking up the other end of Edinburgh and enjoying the Princes Street Gardens. Also very empty. At that point it was getting past six so we thought we'd go up to Rose St to find something to eat. Princes St itself was Sunday morning hangover dead, which is really quite a shame, but its a reflection of the current travel realities. Great pizzas with some really imaginative toppings from Dough on Rose St (goats cheese, beetroot crisps and walnuts for me and Mrs; margherita for the kids) and then back down to the Gardens to eat al fresco before heading home in the early twilight with no traffic to speak of.
A pretty good family day out. Although considering we were meant to be in Alicante this week, the closest we got to seeing the sea was the great view of the Firth of Forth from Arthur's Seat.
