Day 13: October 6th

A spoiled day.

We decided the night before to take a tour of the countryside and get up at 7am to get dressed and call the place to see if they'll take us. The tour company is booked up, so we go back to sleep.

We wake up a bit later and Mike wants to go climb Calton Hill - a hill chock full of monuments - and I want to go shopping. We part ways and he struggles against the tourists that show up on Saturdays and I find the most perfect pair of black pants in the world.

We meet at the Elephant House, a pub/cafe. I apologize to Mike immediately: this is the place Harry Potter was born and it's crawling with Harry stalkers. We pay too much money for a crappy lunch and then take a picture of the outside of the building. Anyone interested in a photo of where JK Rowling first started writing?

Mike wants to walk the Royal Mile today - the other two days we did the other two walks described in the book - but first he wants to book the day tour to the Highlands. We walk up the Royal Mile and I become detached from him as I look in shops at tweeds and cashmere. One store, Ness, hits every nerve in the girly part of my brain and I spend the next 40 mins dashing around the shop looking at hairbands that match bags that match pins that match skirts that match sweaters that match wallets that match jackets. Mike buys me a present: a very pretty, tweed, purple skirt. (Although after the diet of purple I've been on on this trip - I have one piece of clothing that isn't purple - I may not want to wear anymore.) So, I'm in heaven: a new pair of pants and a marvellous skirt.

We walk up the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle which is "not too busy", says the guy taking tickets, but is nontheless crawling with people. We listen to the audio tour and, in true Mike Wood style, exhaustively search the grounds. I take a break at the end of the exhaustive searching because I'm exhausted, and buy a whack of postcards.

Mike and I leave the castle after a few hours and head to the foot of it's drive, where an extreme biking contest is being held. Contestents ride their bikes down the flights of stairs that lead up to the Royal Mile from a lower street. We watch this for a while and then start exploring the street. We walk past yummy places to eat, neat stores and a cheese shop that I'd die to have a fridge for and  end up back on the Royal Mile. Mike wants to take a tour of Mary King's Close - the basements of the current city that used to be the buildings of the current city - so we find the guides and book a tour. After that, Mike and I walk around trying to find a bookstore: we find three: meditation, music and photography, but none will sell me another novel. (I've finished Breakfast at Tiffany's) So, Mike and I part and I go back to the hostel by myself and get some toothpaste at Boots - their pharmacy - and find a bookstore and buy A Handmaid's Tale. Then I take a nap.

Mike comes home and wants to go out. We head out to a gorgeous Thai place we passed earlier that day, but they're too busy and instead head to a place called The Outsider, which I'm sure is a reference to a novel or something. It's a really cool place and the guy tells us to come back in 15mins. (He's great, by the way.. .the maitre 'd or whatever)

We walk around Old Town and find some new building sites and old schools and then go back and have an amazing dinner: Vegetabel Brochette, pita filled with coleslaw, sweet potatoes with pumpkin and swordfish steaks that were amazing. We shared a pear dessert that was to die for and the ice cream served with it has made us want to start making our own ice cream. We wandered home around 11pm, through the most partying city that I've ever seen... Until I saw Dublin... but this came a close second for public drunkenness. It was funny, though, because the goth kids, the Britney girls and girls dressed like they were from the 80s were all walking on the same streets as moms, dads and posh old ladies in white patent leather shoes.

We get home, Mike throws on his facemask while I read and then we sleep.

(OH! The shower was broken when we got home - they were all out of order - and I had to go in search of another shower and found a NICE one one floor up. It had a DOOR! LUXURY!)