The Shiny Side of Edinburgh Part 1

Well, Saturday morning we had to get up early and move from our youth hostel to the Hilton hotel. This took Kerry (because it was too much effort for my pregnant body) moving each one of our 40lbs bags down a narrow flight of stairs, checking out, calling a taxi, loading the bags (the driver did help), going to the Hilton, unloading the bags, and having them tagged and stored for when we were able to check in at 3:00 p.m. Even though this was an ordeal, the difference between the youth hostel and the Hilton was worth the effort. Did I mention that because of Priceline we were paying the same amount as we were for the Youth Hostel? Hurray!

We then had intended to take one of the free tours of the city and play tourist for the day, but once we wondered east from the hotel (which was in the unexplored west side of the city center) we came upon a wonderous sight. Yesterday we had explored a good deal of what is called Old Town. This area was pretty in a medieval bumpy stone roads and towering old buildings from the 1600s sort of way. The area we stumbled upon on Saturday is called New Town. The contrast was shocking. This area just north of the castle was made up of a main shopping strip running east-west on Princes Street that was a mile long full of modern, high fashion stores that would out shine any of our strip malls. One of the the less impressive stores on this strip was the Gap. Their was also a Starbucks on every other corner. The boutiques and resturants lined the North part of the street while a beautiful park lined the south side. On our way down this road that reminded us of home (American commercialism!) we came across beautiful views of the castle, Canton Hill, Author's seat, and the whole of Old Town in general. While every road seems to go uphill in Old Town, New Town looked down on everything, in more ways than one. We also came upon the National gallery and went in to see the free art exhibit featuring many Itlain artist and a collection of Scottish art. Then we turned North to explore the rest of New Town. The residential area was lined in uniform Georgian style buildings that instantly reveiled why these flats/apartments were so much more expensive than those south of the castle. The smooth, unhurried pacing gave us room to walk at an American's leasurly pace. Even in the busy shopping area, the population was noticable older and more varied than the 16 through 20 year olds I described in my last blog. The whole day was a large sigh of relief. Even though we may not be able to afford to live in this part of town at the moment (though the area we are focusing on right now is near the very nice Meadows park and away from the bustle), we deffinately know where to go to relax and where we would like to move to once I can get a stable income. It isn't like old town is a “bad” area of town, but it is the college area with LOTS of the young college kids type activities, cigerate smells, and clubs and the touristy area with lots of crowded streets, tartan shops, and tourist focused stores. New Town is where the population really live and shop.

After a pleasant walk we returned to the hotel to check into our room, move our baggage into the second building and up the elevator that could work as a linen closet. The room was large and spacious. We were so pleased with the almost King size bed and private bathroom. We relaxed for a while hoping to use the free Wifi we thought the hotel offered to communicate with family and businesses. It turns out that there was no Wifi, just broad band that you must pay for that we couldn't use even if we wanted to because of our laptop specs. So went out for dinner at a tiny Italian restarant in which the owner/waiter spoke little English. The food was cheap and good. We then searched for one of the zillion Starbucks to go online. Once we found one that was still open, we only had little over a half an hour to get everything done. I guess the UK doesn't do coffee shops on Saturday Nights.