Saturday 14 May 2011 AM: Edinburgh Scotland

We are sitting at breakfast at the Allison House Hotel in Edinburgh where the ceilings are at least 12ft tall. The six parking slots are full out front on the busy main road that leads into town directly. We are parked in row two middle and must move if the first row wants out.I cannot let this go without describing the ceiling in this dining room. It is like a wedding cake! The decoration is so beautiful with a center medallion of leaves and rosettes! Quite stunning. These houses obviously belonged to the "gentry" in days gone bye!

Friday the 13th:
We had headed back in to York after breakfast and waited for the volunteer guide for a tour around town, unfortunately, the volunteer failed to appear so we all (mostly American tourists) wandered off to do our own thing! I wanted to visit the Barley Hall which had been rediscovered in the 1980s when the building was to be demolished. There was a modern facade and it was functioning as an office building. Imagine the excitement when they found this amazing building dating back to 1360! Of course it was in a dreadful state, but it has been restored to an amazing hands on working museum. Fascinating. There was a group of school children visiting and they had dressed them all in medieval costumes and they were having a living history lesson! (http://www.barleyhall.org.uk/)

Then we headed back to the Minster to explore the crypt and museum. There are still signs of the original Roman foundations.
By this time, it was getting on for 11:40 so we headed back to the B&B to pick up the car and head out.
We departed York at 1200 / noon on Friday the 13th and headed north. At first Garmin had trouble getting her bearings from York back out to the main highway but off we went. To begin with heavy traffic and construction on the A1/M1 for about 20 miles but it was moving at 50+ mph. It was scattered sunshine with an occasional odd shower to clear the windshield of bugs. We stopped for a sandwich at Scotch Corner mid afternoon and arrived in Edinburgh at 4:30PM.

We asked the hostess for dinnertime recommendations and she recommended Delhi Delight a short walk down the avenue where the fresh food, raitia, nan, korma, and kebobs were truly outstanding with great service by a gal that was barely 4' 10" if lucky but extremely cute. We retired early to our appointed digs and watched BBC 2's hospital show and an early night. We planned our Saturday to explore our day in Edinburgh and headed off to sleep.
You will notice that Paul has added great details of FOOD! Expect this to continue throughout the trip. The man is on a quest!