Donna Maree Hanson, Author, Phd in Creative Writing

Sadly our stay in Scotland was rather short. I feel you need more time in Scotland to explore it, visit the highlands. We are only here for three days really. We did one full day in Glasgow and one day in Edinburgh, the rest was getting here and leaving.

I’ve been to Scotland before but Beans has not. She wants to do all the things but this was just a preview. She’s going to have to come back.

We did attempt a hop on hop off tour in Glasgow but sadly we couldn’t get on the bus. They required us to physically print out our vouchers. I mean we are travelling. We don’t have a printer.  The bus driver said go up to the Uni Library and use their internet café. Well the library said they had no public facilities so we gave up.

We have limited time so spending a couple of hours and money looking for somewhere to print out a voucher and walking back to the pick up place was ridiculous. I mean really what was the driver thinking? He says don’t worry there’s a bus every ten minutes. All right for him. We’ve requested a refund on the tickets but the company hasn’t responded.

We had a nice lunch, actually breakfast, and then went for a walk to the Botanical Gardens. We were meeting a friend in the evening. We walked through West End to get there and then had a fab dinner at the Banana Leaf, a kind of up market Malaysian place. Glasgow really is a vegan food heaven. Thanks Tash!

A few snaps from around West End Glasgow, complete with Tardis.

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Thursday 31^st we took the train to Edinburgh. It was really easy to get to the station via the metro. Funny little things the metro trains. They are so small. Beans felt claustrophobic. At Buchanan Street you walk through the tunnel to Queen Street Station. It is weird but the on line instructions said to catch a bus. We could have done but the metro was easier and more predictable.

First up we met up with Laura, who met us at the train station. Laura is a romance scholar and we started a walking tour around Edinburgh. I went to places I had never been before, Calton Hill, behind Hollyrood Castle and to the Georgian part of town. We had lunch in Hendersen’s,a  vegetarian restaurant and later we made for the National Museum of Scotland. I had a fan meet up planned with Alistair but he had to call it off due to illness in the family. Lillian Edwards met us at 4.0opm. Originally I was meeting her in Glasgow but she lives in Edinburgh so it worked out really well. We had failed to meet up at Worldcon. It just happens that way sometimes.

Lillian is a whirlwind. She had a new car, a wonderful bright green Skoda and she took us up in the car and around Arthur’s Seat to the village of Duddingston, which has the oldest pub in Glasgow, the Sheep’s Heid. We had a lovely drink, then we stumbled across some ancient skittles and played with those. Then we headed to an Indian Restaurant, Mother India on Infirmary Street. We said goodbye to Laura who had come along with us and had an excellent meal. Lillian was a great host and very informative. My daughter is interested in Lillian’s area of academic  expertise-Internet privacy.

I was so happy we went and we got to meet two new people who I had only every corresponded with on the internet.

Here are a few pics from Edinburgh and one of Lilian and me taken at the loch.

here is that pic of the skittles which we think are quite ancient.

This shot is a wide view of the view over Newtown and the firth from Claton Hill.

Today we head to Dublin to stay with James and Fionna for the weekend.

We realise that we are on the last three weeks of the trip. Next post will lots of photos. I’ve never been to Ireland before.

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