I loved this sign on all the doors at the airport
We arrived at our hotel in Edinburgh on Friday night, with a
light rain falling. Our hotel innkeeper
pointed the way to the Royal Mile, a street that stretched between the Holyrood
Palace (where Mary Queen of Scots was kept under house arrest prior to her
execution) and Edinburgh Castle. The
street housed a mile of pubs, liquor stores (well, scotch whiskey stores, to be
exact), and kilt shops. I think the hope
was that you’d crawl your way through the pubs, top off with a substantial
whiskey tasting, and then lose all reason, and buy a kilt. I think Bob might look good in a kilt, after
all. Well, maybe not “after all”, but at
least after a pint of Guinness and a few shots of Scotch!
We started out with a walk from Holyrood Palace to the
castle, and then we circled back to find a place to eat. There was a highly rated restaurant called
The Witchery which we tried to get into at 8 PM on a Friday night, but
were turned away due to lack of reservations (unless we wanted to eat at 10:30
PM). Instead, we selected a pub called
Deacon Brody’s which had a lively bar downstairs and a cozy dining room
upstairs. The Guinness was great, the
atmosphere fun, but the food was severely lacking that evening. Not that we cared – anything would have
tasted good after the day we’d had.
My dinner sounded promising - sea bass with mashed potatoes
and seasonal vegetables, while Bob ordered a vegetable pie. The description of his dish was tantalizing –
butternut squash, onions, and mushrooms in a pastry crust. Unfortunately, both dishes seemed to have
been cooked the day before then placed under a heat lamp for one to two hours
until sufficiently dried to the consistency of beef jerky. The fish was about as thick as a piece of
stiff cardboard and tasted about the same.
The squash in Bob’s pie tasted as if it had been freeze-dried and only
partially reconstituted. We noticed the
person across from us having similar issues with her squash – both Bob and this
woman had built a little cairn of brown-orange cubes set on the side of the
plate. The poor couple next to us had it
worse, though. His dinner of prime rib
and potatoes arrived with an apology from the kitchen – “Sorry to tell you
there was a mix up in the order and your companion’s dish was not made, but
will be up shortly. I’ve brought a
second plate in case you want to share your dinner with her.” Oh, well, OK, the guy said. His dinner looked and apparently tasted
delicious. The couple slowly finished it trying to buy time waiting for hers to
arrive. After they had been done for 15
minutes or so, her dish was finally delivered.
At least hers appeared to be succulent and freshly made – she’d also
ordered the sea bass – and the waitress told her she was sure the bill would be
adjusted to reflect the inconvenience.
Waiting for our dinners in the Deacon Brody dining room
Deacon Brody's - who could resist such a cute pub??
After dinner, we wandered through the whiskey stores and
went into a really quaint, old bar to taste a flight of smoky, peaty whiskeys
from the bar’s selection of over 100 bottles.
Scotch is definitely an acquired taste, and it was interesting to note
how different the spirits tasted from each other. We wrote down the names of some of the more
interesting bottles, and when we returned to our room I searched Bevmo online
to compare prices – very similar, so no need to lug a fragile bottle around
with us. Also, we had 40 pounds of
coupons from Virgin for use on inflight shopping, so maybe a bottle would make
its way home with us that way. (We got
the Virgin coupons as a “thank you” for volunteering to give up our seats on
the flight from SF to Heathrow; turns out our seats weren’t needed but to say
“thanks anyway”, the airline provided the vouchers).
We finished off the night with a really nice cheese course and
then strolled home down the royal mile, feeling all romantic in the misty rain
and golden glow of street lights on the medieval buildings.
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