London-Edinburgh Vacay Days 8, 9 & 10

 

Hello friends, welcome to the fourth installment in my England-Scotland vacation series.  We were in the United Kingdom for 12 days between 04.27.2026 and 05.08.2026.  And it has taken me this long to get all of the posts written about our trip.  I really never thought folks would be interested in following along on our vacation so was surprised when my first vacation post was so well received.  If you missed the earlier posts, please find them here:

• Days 1 - 3, here

• Days 4 & 5, here

• Days 6 & 7, here

This was truly the trip of a lifetime for us.  We have been to France and Germany, now England and Scotland.  I feel guilty wishing/hoping that maybe we can visit several more European countries before our traveling days are behind us.

Edinburgh Day Eight

We woke up on 05.02.2026 for our fourth day in Edinburgh.  Our hotel in Scotland was The Bonnie Hotel, and our favorite of the 3 places where we stayed.  You might remember from my last post, that we took full advantage of the kitchenette in this room, filling it with snacks and sandwiches to save money on meals.  Breakfast on this Sunday morning was a pastry and some fresh fruit.  I was able to make coffee in the room and PC - not a coffee drinker - had a bottle of juice in the fridge.  The only drawback for this room was the alley and parking lot 'view' from our window.  

cat that swallowed the canary expression

Our plans for today included a whole lot of walking and some laundry.  We started out by taking the bus to the end of the Royal Mile with our dirty clothes in tow.  Had researched a laundromat that would wash and dry our laundry while we were out sightseeing.  

It was gray and damp and cool when we started out.  Felt like we were really in Scotland!!  The laundromat was part that and part cafe...kind of a cool idea.  The ground floor was a coffee shop and the basement was the laundry.  We dropped off our clothes to be washed, dried and ready for us by late afternoon.  

Once the laundry was sorted, we were on our way to Arthur's Seat, an extinct volcano that sits east of Edinburgh Castle and Old Town Edinburgh.  

The trail up Arthur's Seat is described a moderate, 2.5 mile loop hike.  The trail began with a steep set of stairs that led to a paved roadway.  And I felt very optimistic about this walk.  

Before long, the road dwindled down to a well worn dirt path.  The drizzle turned into more of a soft rain, and the temperature seemed to drop.  My nose began dripping and my teeth began chattering. 

We hung a left and began the slippery climb up the grassy mountainside toward the peak of Arthur's Seat.

Behind us was a beautiful view of Dunsapie Loch and the city of Edinburgh.

As we neared the summit, the grassy mountainside gave way to a very steep cobbled walk. It was about now that I began wondering why this hike had seemed like a good idea.  

Had to convert the video above from MP4 format to AVI to get it to upload.  Looks like it might be of questionable quality but I haven't watched it yet.  The wind was absolutely roaring around us and I was making all kinds of faces in the cold and wet.  So you are missing much if the video is no bueno.

Here are a couple of photos from the peak.  I love the eraser feature available for editing our photos.  We are erasing people, cars, objects with great abandon and the result is usually pretty good.  I started thinking what if our erasing folks from our photos would mean they were erased from the world, or from that experience on that particular day.  Would make a good story!!

                                                poof, they're gone

It was pretty miserable on the peak so we didn't tarry.  We took some pictures, looked around and headed down, opting to descend from the opposite side of the peak.  

On this side of Arthur's Seat near the base we came across the ruin of St. Anthony's Chapel built in the 1100s.  

The Palace of Holyroodhouse was at the foot of the mountain where we descended.  It was my favorite of all the castles we visited.  

Outside of the palace are the ruins of Holyrood Chapel.

Photography is forbidden inside the palace.  Boo.  But I snuck this one of the rooms.  The whole palace was lovely.  

The grounds were even more beautiful.

The gift shop at Holyrood was my favorite.  Oh, the darling memorabilia.  Especially the Christmas ornaments.  

it would be fun to have a royal Christmas tree

By the time we had toured Holyrood Palace (and visited the gift shop!!), it was after 3:00 pm and we were HUNGRY.  We started walking up the Royal Mile and came to this restaurant, Oink. Looked like the perfect place for lunch.

I had an 'oink' with sage and onion stuffing and apple sauce (like an apple-flavored BBQ sauce) and PC had a 'grunter' with stuffing and BBQ sauce.  These sandwiches were a taste of home.

Once our tummies were full, we started back up the Royal Mile and popped into another great bookstore.  

We caught a bus back to the Laundrykafe to get our nice, clean clothes.  Picked up another bus for the trip back to our hotel. I think we snacked on goodies in bed, exhausted from this 18K step day.

Edinburgh Day Nine

Thank goodness, we slept like champs every night at the Bonnie Hotel.  We needed that good rest to continue going like Ever Ready batteries the next day.  

This was an excursion day.  Another bus tour, this time to Fife and St. Andrews, and Falkland, Scotland.  Hallelujah, we were able to sleep in a bit and enjoyed a proper breakfast at Black Sheep coffee shop.  Pastries and coffee/pastries and cocoa.  I wore a very librarian-esque sweatshirt (a gift from Brennyn), a striped turtleneck, black wide-leg, yoga pants, Skechers Max-Cushioning running shoes and my rain jacket.  Layers, baby.

Oh, the lush green we passed the first hour of our tour.  

The fishing village of Fife was our first 30 minute comfort stop.  And fishy, it was!!  I think low tide was partially to blame for that.

We gladly hopped back on the bus and were soon on our way to St. Andrews.  Our tour guide/bus driver took us around the village so we could get our bearings then let us out to explore on our own.

The first picture we took in St. Andrews was a selfie in front of Northpoint Cafe, where Prince Harry first met Kate Middleton.

have to love a love story

Next item of business was lunch.  We decided to try Greyfriars Inn.  

It was a charming pub-style restaurant with dark wood, tall tables and lots of windows.

The cider was refreshing and the food was quite tasty.  PC had a steak ciabatta and I had salmon and cheddar fish cakes.  

After our meal, we had a lot of eating to walk off.  We headed down North Street and ducked onto the grounds of the University of St. Andrews, where William and Kate went to uni.  

reminded me of the private college, Rhodes, I attended my freshman year

We passed the 450 year old ruins of St. Andrews castle.

Paid our respects at a World War II memorial.

my soldier and veteran

Around the bend to St. Andrews Cathedral, built in the 13th century beside the North Sea.  Reverent. Such haunting beauty.  To think how this was built almost a thousand years ago.  Just a marvel.  And that so much is still standing.

those folks escaped the eraser

This cutie pie below had on such a put together look that I had to snap her photo.  I tried to explain how much I loved her 'fit.'  And asked to take her picture.  Isn't she so sweet?

From the cathedral, we walked down to the beach.  I'm not used to seeing folks in jackets on the beach.  It's always so hot when we are vacationing at South Padre Island or Galveston or one of the picturesque beaches of Mexico.

We checked the time and realized we needed to head back to our meeting spot for the tour bus.  I really wanted to hop in line for ice cream at the renowned Jannetta's Gelateria but the line was a half a block down the sidewalk.  

We piled back into the van for the short ride to Falkland.  

It was a very charming little town.  Would rather have spent more time there than at Fife.  But, oh, well.  We stopped into a bakery/coffee shop for pastries.  Walked up and down the main street.  

By the time we were back to Edinburgh, it was approaching 7:00 pm.  We had close to 17K steps.  I don't remember what we did for dinner - if anything.  Probably, ate up the remainder of the cheese, bread, fruit in our fridge as we were leaving Scotland the next morning.

It was another splendid day.  And I guarantee we slept very well again that night.

London Day Ten

I know this post is photo loaded and has gone on and on but Day 10 was quick so I am going to throw it in here with this post.  

We checked out of our hotel, walked to the train station and took the 4-hour trip back to London.  I was sad to leave Scotland, but PC was not quite as sad.  We had heard stories of how hundreds of years ago Scots would dump out their chamber pots from the windows of their apartments several floors up.  So, the whole time we were in Edinburgh, PC was looking up!!

We arrived in London, midafternoon.  By the time we (PC) figured out how to get to the tube to get to our hotel, it was dinner time.  We left our things at our hotel, Z Hotel in Covent Garden, and started out for our Jack the Ripper:  What About the Women tour which was quite a distance from our accommodations.  

I think we decided to get in the vicinity of the tour and then look for somewhere to eat dinner.  It was drizzly and chilly - more typical London weather - so we found a fast food type place where PC could get a sandwich and I got some Middle-Eastern chicken.  My meal was chicken.  Just chicken.  Which was kind of odd to me.  But lots and lots of chicken.

The tour focused on the lives of Jack Ripper's victims rather than the murders themselves. It took us on a 2-mile walk around the Whitechapel community of London, which was once a very impoverished neighborhood but is now a very multi-culturally vibrant hamlet.  

We met up with the tour guide and other participants at Flower & Dean Walk at dusk.  

We were introduced to each of the victims, learned about their families and lives. The central theme seemed to be that these women were all desperately poor and perhaps in the wrong place at the wrong time just trying to keep their heads' above water.  God bless them.

It was dark and drizzly and coldish when the tour concluded.  We were both worn slick.  Had to take the tube back to the Covent Garden area then walk several blocks to our hotel.  We were thankful for another comfortable bed and clean room.

Well, I still have 2 very full days of our trip to share but can't possibly add a single photo more to this post.  So, please come back in a day or two when I hope to have the last installment of our London-Edinburgh Vacay posted.  

Your Turn

Have lots to do before we take off early Monday morning for Pensacola.  Need to finalize my grocery order, clean house, mow, and pack!!  I have been setting things I want to take on the bed in the upstairs guest room as I think of them.  Time to get the suitcases out and start squishing things into them.

Hope you enjoy some seasonal fun this weekend.  We are looking at triple digit days so I am sure we will find time to swim and float in the pool.

Thank you, my friends, for putting up with my photo-heavy, long-winded post.  I appreciate your visit.

Hugs and kisses,