for fellow travellers

Friday, June 19, 2009

Scotland one of the most beautiful places on earth

We are back from a great vacation. We had planned to see Scotland in the latter part of the vacation. It was a novelty for us, Shaleen and me, rest of the cities we had already been to before, (except for Brugee). So that part we planned to visit in the end.
To keep the anticipation going till the end. I think when you plan a vacation, the sequence in which you plan your holiday locales is very important, if you are covering more than one place. If you see the best in the first go, the rest pales in its comparison. During our USA trip the trip ended in a grand finale, the best, the Niagara falls.
I found Scotland quite overwhelming. As I had mentioned in my previous post we took car rentals in Scotland. We were three cars going one after the other. Shaleen had purchased a GPS from London with maps of the European union. His colleague Amrita helped us with the selection of GPS which she had already purchased on the net at Amazon.com.
The car rentals gave us more freedom as we were not bound by any particular schedule, except that we had our hotel and apartment bookings done from before. We got the best deal from Alamo and it got better with Etihad Airways Partnership.
We reached Edinburgh from Amsterdam by flight. It took us quite some time to get a taxi for 8 persons as we had a lot of luggage. On reaching Grove street Apartments, we met the rest of our family. They had arrived the same day by train from London. Grove street Apartments proved to be a great stay. It is a daily serviced apartment!! After Citadines stay everywhere else --London, Paris, and Brussels. Grove street Apartments exceeded expectations.
We were so hungry on reaching Edinburgh. The one and a half hour flight had been without any service and the costliest leg of our journey at 80 Euros per person. We feasted on fried Bhindi and Theplas from India and by that time Suhani and Nalin had convinced us to go to the Ghost walking tour. In retrospect I think that was one of the most enjoyable and happening excursions of the trip.
We met our guide outside the Starbucks cafe on the Royal mile. 10 pounds adults and 8 pounds child was the cost and we got a free torch and a drink at the local pub each. He was a good story-teller. We came to know that suicide is legal in Scotland. He told us about the witch burnings, and about Mary Queen of Scots .



The pub where we got a free drink each

He told us that a Scots believe that after death their souls come back to Scotland and therefore at the graveyard there were many memorials of scotsmen who had lost their lives in other countries, made by their kinsmen so that their souls would have a resting place in Scotland when it came back.

We walked a few kilometres and saw few of the greatest views of the city.










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