Wednesday’s principal destination was Edinburgh Castle which stands upon the core of an extinct 350 million year old volcano placing it some 250 feet above the city. This is easily a full day experience with much about the mind dizzying royal history that becomes even less comprehensible with the Scottish connections included. The castle area has many highlights such as St. Margaret’s Chapel (the oldest building in Edinburgh), the Great Hall with its early sixteenth century hammer beam roof, the Stone of Destiny (used to inaugurate monarchs of Scotland and England for over 1,000 years) and the military museums. But it is the views that try to steal the show.

Along the way we visited the Sir Walter Scott Monument, Princes Street Gardens, the Royal Mile, St. Giles Cathedral and the exhibit around the city called Jungle City. I would love to purchase one of the animals.

Edinburgh is even lovelier with less wind, very walkable and friendly. We lunched at a Kurdish restaurant near the castle and then it was tapas for dinner at Cafe Andaluz on George St. Another recommended dining stop if you get here.

A late start and early finish to our first full day in Edinburgh. A late start because that is what seems to happen when we are settled in somewhere for at least a week. An early finish because the very high winds from the leftovers of Hurricane Katia that are pummeling this area made the afternoon conditions too unpleasant to remain outdoors walking around the city.

We managed lunch at a little Turkish dive on the Royal Mile called Cafe Truva (our lunches were very good) before heading to the east end of what they call the Royal Mile to visit The Palace of Holyroodhouse. Today the Palace is known as the official Scottish residence of Queen Elizabeth II. Built on the grounds of an abbey in the late 15th century, it, along with everything else involving the British royals, has a long and storied history of who lived here and who was killed here for the past five hundred years. Worth the visit for not only for the history, architecture and stunning abbey ruins but also for the gorgeous gardens.

For those reading this who might come to Scotland and be looking for restaurants, in addition to a good lunch at Cafe Truva, we have had very good dinners the first two nights at The Magnum on Albany Street and Amarone on St. Andrews Square.

We are on the train from London to Edinburgh, Scotland. It will be our first time to Scotland. It is a four and a half hour trip that left one minute early, no security check, coffee and tea served three minutes into the journey, internet service, OUR BAGS ARE WITH US and the scenery is lovely. Hot meal coming later. Who needs air travel?

More from Scotland.

As has been said too many times, we like London a lot. While this was
a very short visit, it was good to see some British friends, attend a
wedding and to visit three restaurants in particular that are among
our favorites anywhere. They are Patara on Beauchamp
(www.pataralondon.com), Zayna (www.zaynarestaurant.co.uk/) and La
Roche (http://www.la-roche-london.co.uk/). We highly recommend all
three of these spots for anyone visiting London. In addition to the
food and people being outstanding, these three places treat us better
with our showing up every six months for the past year than our most
frequented spot in Denver (most frequented because it is closest to
our house) where we show up at least weekly. They are always giving
us some culinary extra to enhance our restaurant experiences in
London.

So on to Edinburgh where we have not been before. We will be there
for a week before heading to Ireland. For now, a few parting random
shots from this visit to London.

On Saturday we had the good fortune of attending our first British
wedding as we observed the marriage ceremony of Gail Hammond and Robin
Edwards. I have known Gail since 2008 where we met working for the
Maya Research Program in northwestern Belize. This past summer I
worked for Gail on her project as she is a member of the summer staff
at MRP as she works on her PhD here in London.

Now in Britain not only must the person performing the marriage
ceremony be licensed, so must the location be licensed as a place to
hold weddings. Even if you want to have the ceremony in your home, it
must be licensed. Gail and Robin chose the Camden Town Hall where we
were seated in the Council Chamber seats while the ceremony was
conducted by the town’s marriage officials who only asked three times
if anyone was aware of any legal reason that the couple should not be
wed under the marriage laws of Britain. It was lovely and charming in
not in any way sterile given the governmental surroundings. The
surroundings actually made the wedding feel like it had historical
significance.

As the next wedding party arrived for their ceremony in Council
Chambers, it was off to the Queen’s Head and Artichoke pub (the Brits
do know how to name things) for the wedding party for the rest of the
afternoon and evening. It was a lovely day for a lovely couple.

When possible I like to post about something I think is out of the ordinary that might be new to someone reading my boring travel blog. This is one such post. The UN? You thought it was in New York City?

This UN is cooler.

In this case UN (which they do go by) stands for United Nude. It is a shoe store with locations around the world. We were attracted to it because we thought their product display and store environment were among the coolest retail presentations we had ever seen. If you like contemporary design and women’s shoes that your wife is probably unwilling to wear even though you’d want her to, you should check it out. They also have men’s shoes that your husband probably wouldn’t wear to the office but they too are very cool. I am very tempted to go back for those rainbow colored loafers to wear to my next board meeting.

Many boundary pushing retail environments will not allow photos and there are even some malls that don’t allow cameras. The people at the London UN were very nice and let me take some shots. I didn’t want to take advantage of their generosity so I didn’t spend a lot of time setting up shots because the lighting is changing constantly…to the music of course. A very cool presentation. But here are a few for the flavor. For professional pictures, go to unitednude.com

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Now that we have our luggage, we can be out and about seeing new things. But it was not until 26 hours after our arrival that the last of the bags arrived. In a nutshell:

Our Tuesday night flight to London was cancelled while we were in the air going to Washington. To United’s credit, they were ready with alternative arrangements when we disembarked the aircraft in DC and they even were able to assure us that our baggage would be re-directed just as we had been. It was not a non-stop but rather a connection through Paris.

We arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport about 7 am on Wednesday morning and it was easy to kill the four hour layover by wasting time trying to find the correct terminal without the assistance of any signage and no visible airport personnel. Not just no signage in English but we found no signage at all in any language even telling what airlines were in which terminals.

Upon finding British Airways, our next carrier, we checked in with them so as to be sure they had our baggage information even though a call to United’s baggage service told us that our bags were still in Washington on Wednesday morning in spite of three flights subsequent to our cancellation having left for London.

We left late from Paris for a 40 minute flight, were delayed in the air another 30 and arrived shortly after twelve noon and, of course, no bags. But BA claimed to have found them in the United baggage claim area in a different terminal. A $30 cab ride to the United terminal (Heathrow is very spread out) resulted in our being told by United that the bags had been picked up by the BA courier maybe 10 minutes earlier and were on their way to our flat (why this responsibility became BA’s who never touched our bags during our trip is not clear).

After calling and waiting in the flat the rest of the day, we were awakened by a 10 pm call with the good news that the bags would be at the flat between midnight and 1 am. The 12:50 am wake up call from the courier had me going into the London street barefoot and wearing only my brand new British flag boxer shorts purchased just hours before from a late night souvenir stand (after wearing the only clothes we had for nearly 36 hours, they were still in the 2 hour and 40 minute wash cycle) to learn that there were only three of the four bags in the truck.

So up all night, on the phone in the morning with British Airways and the bag courier and continuing the wait through the day, bag number four arrived at 2:20 pm on Thursday. So we are finally seeing the sights of London again. And thanks United for not knowing where the bags were at any point in time including when you told us they were still in Washington. At that time they were on a plane about to land in London. You can check out my “Airlines Lie” post about this same topic in January 2011.

One of the larger lessons from this experience was that British customer service persons are incredibly nice. Immediately empathetic in such a way that one could never justify getting angry. I was impressed.

Tomorrow our visit to the UN.

Ah, Paris! We arrived here about 7 am local time. Yes, we said we were starting this trip in London for five days, followed by a week in Scotland and nine days in Ireland. But today is the fifteenth anniversary of our first date so where better to celebrate it than the Charles de Gaulle Airport outside of Paris?

The truth is that our flight to London was flat out cancelled and they routed us through Paris. And aren’t those smart phones great. You get to find out your next flight is cancelled before the arriving flight’s wheels stop turning. We are scheduled to arrive at Heathrow Airport outside of London only about five hours late. As for our luggage, who knows. As of now, United has no idea where it is.

These pictures are merely to show that we are in Paris. Hopefully the next update will be from London.