Time for an update.

On Sunday, I wasn't feeling that great. I probably had been overdoing it for the previous several days, and I really just needed to sleep and rest. I had wanted to visit a particular church in London that was suggested to me. It has three services on Sundays, but I lost track of time and when I realized it, I didn't have enough time to get there. The extra rest didn't hurt, anyway. For lunch on Sunday, I went back to Chamomile Cafe, and a funny little thing happened. There was a French customer at the counter, and he asked the woman at the counter why they don't allow Internet access on the weekends. "I can work offline, is no problem, but why you don't have wireless on the weekends, it makes no sense." The woman behind the counter, who is also French, I believe, didn't even look at him. She kept working and was quiet for a couple of seconds, then she said, "Well, a lot of things in life don't make sense." I tried not to react, but my body couldn't decide whether it wanted to bust out laughing or my eyes to get huge. I can't imagine that conversation happening in the US, where the customer is always right and the sales person apologizes if things aren't to the customer's liking.

On Monday morning, I got up and had breakfast at Chamomile, bought a packaged sandwich at the Tesco grocery store across the street, then headed to the Underground. The trip to King's Cross station was very easy, I didn't have to change lines. King's Cross has a big Underground station down below, and several floors above is the train station. I need to go back to the first Harry Potter movie and see if Harry's arrival at the train station matches what I saw. It's very modern-looking on the inside, very clean. I had no problem finding the machine to print out my ticket.

I had a total Mr. Bean moment. A day or two earlier, I had bought a 1.5 litre bottle...I mean liter...of Coke, and had poured it into a couple of smaller water bottles. Well, all the jostling in my bag worked up a lot of pressure. So at King's Cross, I found a table to sit and have a little lunch, pulled out my sandwich and a bottle of Coke. As I twisted the top off, the pressure blew the top straight off with a loud POP. I have no idea where it went, and I think I had the same bewildered look on my face as several other people around. Absolutely no idea where it landed. After I finished eating, I considered what to do with the other Coke bottle. I couldn't find a trash can, and I had a bad mental image of dropping it in, having it go off as well, and having security take me away for dropping a bomb in the station. I ended up wrapping a plastic bag over the bottle and twisting the top off (like a smart person would remove the cork from a bottle of Champagne; you wanted to hold and catch the cork in a cloth draped over it, so you don't put someone's eye out and waste a bunch of liquid spewing out).

King's Cross has a brick wall inside it with a plaque that says, "PLATFORM 9 3/4". I totally did the tourist thing, and got another tourist to take a photo of me standing next to it. I considered going to the restroom while at the station, but there was a turnstyle that charged 50 pence admission to the bathroom. I passed.

I watched the monitors until I saw which platform the 1 pm train to Edinburgh was leaving from, and headed there. I easily found my seat. My seat mate turned out to be an older man from Glasgow, who had the strong stereotypical accent that Americans think all Scottish people have. He was pretty cool. Andy said he had moved about forty years ago to Ottowa, and was in the UK with his family, visiting. He still had his accent after all that time because he had been around others with his accent, but he was sure his had weakened over time.

The train made about four or five stops on the way to Edinburgh, and the trip took about four hours twenty minutes. The first stop was Peterborough, I'm not sure after that, but I know it stopped at Newcastle and then Berwick-upon-Tweed (silent "w"). The train goes straight north to Newcastle and then follows the coast. I had been seeing a lot of farmland and pastures, lots of sheep, and then I looked out the right side and saw the North Sea! It hadn't occurred to me we'd be so close to the ocean. The train moves very quickly and very smoothly. Smallish seats with foldout trays. You can move between cars (carriages) and there is a car with a counter you can buy food from. I got a ham and cheese panini and a slice of fruitcake. Andy got off about halfway through the trip, and I had two seats to myself until the next stop, when a man from Dundee came on. His accent was also Scottish sounding, but much milder similar to London but with a roll to the Rs. Andy's Glasgow accent, on the other hand, had a lot more obvious characteristics: the R roll, the short "I" almost sounds like a "U" (Fort William sounds like "Fort Wullyum"), the long "I" sounds like a long "A" ("five" sounds like "fave"), and the long "E" also sounds like a long "A" but more pronounced ("fear" sounds like "fair").

There was a definite temperature change of about ten degrees F between London and Edinburgh. I was wearing layers, which I'm not normally used to. Actually I think I was. I can't remember. I just remember getting off the train and digging my jacket out of the bag. I found my way out of the station and started looking for the bus stop. Edinburgh has a £3.50 all-day bus pass, and when I bought my train ticket, I got a discounted one for £3. I found the bus stop easy enough, lined up with everyone else, and hopped on. The street my hotel was on was a straight shot, about 1.4 miles down the road, Craigmillar Park. The stop I got off was Cameron Toll, just a short walk away.

Too many words, time to start another post.