Unexplorable

The night bus wasn't actually too bad.  The Romantic notions associated with the night bus, like most things, came from Harry Potter.  It was too warm, and everybody was taking all their clothes off and feeling nauseated from the heat pouring from the vents, and Nicholas (surprise, surprise) was the one to request it be turned off.  Most people cheered.  One person hi-fived him.  I went to sleep.

We woke up every few hours when the bus stopped and turned all the lights on and the driver spoke to us for some reason.  I was half-asleep so genuinely had no idea what on earth he was saying.  In the wee hours (we're in Scotland now so I can say this) Nicholas woke me up so I could see the orange sun peeking up over the North Sea.

"We're in Scotland," he whispered.

(He was wrong.  We were near Tweedmouth.)

For how uncomfortable the seats were and how unpredictable the heating/cooling system was, we arrived relatively well-rested.  We walked our suitcases the 1.5km to Fergus' place (he was the AirBnB we lined up) in the Old Town.  We're a few minutes walk from Holyrood Park and around the corner from the Edinburgh Festival Theatre.

We had a cup of tea with Fergus.  Well, Nick had tea. Fergus had instant coffee.  I had water and was thrilled to drink tap water that didn't taste like chlorine and leave my stomach gurgly.  It was just after 8am and we were hungry for breakfast, so we sought out a bagelry, drank some coffee and went wandering to pat Greyfriar's Bobby (that's a bronze dog).

 This old British man (who comes from the Lake District) asked Nicholas to support him while he took some pictures of Bobby and the Bobby sign (both on his iPad and his DSLR).  I was asked to hold the cane.  Nicholas helped him cross the street and put him into his car and when Nicholas asked "Are you okay now?" he started rummaging in a bag and asked us to take some 'sweeties'. 

Greyfriar's Bobby is a terrier who didn't leave the grave of his owner for 14 years after his death.  They say this, but Scotland is cold.  And wet.  The story goes that the cemetery staff tried to kick him out, failed, and ended up letting him stay.  When he died at the ripe old age of 16, they buried him just outside the cemetery and erected a little statue and fountain for you to pat.  They also opened a pub in his honour, because it's Scotland.

We then went to Grassmarkets and I bought a map from a little art store.  According to the map, we should see badgers and squirrels.  We have seen neither and, frankly, I'm glad.  Oliver told us some horror stories about badgers while we were in London.