That wasn't any twenty minute walk.

The Northumberland Hotel is a nice little bed and breakfast, maybe about a dozen rooms. I'm not sure if the street has an overall name, it changes names several times from the Edinburgh train station and going south. I think it's the A7 and becomes the A701. But name-wise, it's North Bridge, South Bridge, Nicholson Street, Clerk Street, South Clerk Street, Minto Street, Mayfield Gardens, and then Craigmillar Park. Visibly, when you start out at North Bridge, you can see Edinburgh Castle right there, and the first cross street is called the Royal Mile, which itself is a nickname for a series of streets that run about a mile between Edinburgh Castle on the west to the Palace of Holyrood House on the east. Going along North and South Bridge, the buildings look old (not at all in a bad way). As you go on, there are a ton of small shops and places to eat, and there are a couple of older church buildings. About Minto Street, you stop seeing restaurants and start seeing small hotels, one right after another. My hotel is near the end of the street. When I checked in, the clerk said it was about a twenty minute walk up the street to the nearest restaurants. He must be a speed walker.

I did the smart thing and took the bus on the opposite side of the road, up to food, and just looked at place names until I found something that interested me. I got off for a Japanese noodle restaurant called something like Yocoko and got chicken noodles and seafood soup to go (in the UK, instead of "here or to go", it's "dine in or take-away") and started walking back towards my hotel. It turns out to be more difficult to find the right bus. I'm not used to dealing with bus numbers. There are about eight or nine that travel the whole length of this street, but picking one up in the middle is more difficult. I found one that was going to "Craigmillar Crossroad" which I knew to be a wrong choice when the bus driver turned left. Fortunately I was able to get off around the next corner, and walk back to the street. I ended up walking back to my hotel, at least ten minutes, and I was already in the hotel section.

The hotel itself is nice, but it has a couple of problems and quirks. The bathroom is a nice size, but the shower is one of those closets with the accordion door. It literally took me a couple of minutes to figure out how to work the shower (temperature was set fine, but on/off is a dial around the knob). A bigger problem is the room is just cold, and there's not much that can be done. The windows are single pane, and the curtains are sheer. Also, the hotel is barely twenty feet from the road, so I can very clearly hear road noise. It's not that bad, just more than I'm used to. The bed's comforter is very warm, though.

The absolute biggest problem though, is the Internet connection. They have a couple of different wireless networks, one that's supposedly stronger upstairs, the other stronger downstairs. The connection itself drops occasionally. The clerk invited me to look at his setup. I didn't see anything really wrong, but I advised him that he should call British Telecom and complain about the connection, and ask them to test the line's signal strength and quality. My laptop won't connect to one network at all, but it will to the other one, but has trouble staying connected. It's much more usable downstairs in the common room, which is where I'm sitting now as I type this.

It's lunchtime now, and I haven't yet described yesterday's adventure. I'm wondering what to do today. I could take a tour of Edinburgh Castle, but it will take about three hours, and I'm seeing dark clouds outside. I thought it wasn't supposed to rain until tomorrow. Another option is to take the Edinburgh tour bus like I did in London, but I think I want to buy a hat before I get on an open-top bus in this weather. The forecast looked like partly cloudy today, rain tomorrow, a sunny day after that, and a couple of rainy days after that. Another thing I need to do is see about finding another place to stay. This is a nice place, but I would like to be able to use the Internet in my room. I guess I should at least ask if I would be able to extend my stay if I decided. This is the burden part of my adventure, finding places to stay and moving around.