Got to Edinburgh

9.30am
Well i'm sitting in the living room in the cottage in scotland watching telly. I've been up just over an hour, had my breakfast and got washed and dressed.

We were intending leaving home at about 10am yesterday but by the time we'd packed the car and everything we didn't actually get out until 10.40. It wasn't a najor deal cos we weren't in a real hurry.

I was intending only having one stop after about 2-2.5 hours but after about an hour and a half i decided to have a brief stop for toilets and a quick snack cos i was hungry. The secretary in one of my schools had said to me that Annandale Water services was really nice but it's quite a way into Scotland so i didn't think i'd get to there :-( Because we'd had a stop earlier than i intended i looked at the map and decided we'd aim for our main stop at either Gretna or Annandale - depending on how we felt at Gretna. When we got to the Gretna services it said it was another 22 miles to Annandale and we were both feeling fine so that was where we headed to.

When we got to Annandale Water we sat in the car to eat lunch before we went for a wander. After we'd been to the toilets we found our way outside which was the main reason for stopping at that particular services - i'd been told it was some kind of bird sanctuary type place. When we got outside there was a little pond leading down into a waterfall with ducks in :-) I had some pastry from my sausage roll which i deliberately kept back for feeding the ducks and they were all very appreciative - especially the one by my feet which was taking the pastry straight from my fingers ;-D

There was a white duck with a clutch of ducklings and there's one bit by the water that hasn't got a fence round it so we could get really close :-) There was a girl nearby and she actually picked up one of the ducklings - awww :-) My mum and i went for a walk round the lake generally enjoying relaxing before we went round the shop. I only bought an A-Z in the shop and then we went out to make our way for the final bit of the journey.

I put the sat nav on for the last bit but he was really annoying at first cos there were 3 roundabouts to negotiate before we got back onto the motorway. I was slightly concerned that we kept passing the signs for Edinburgh and ignoring them :-o I trusted the satnav and thankfully it was correct until nearly the end. The directions we got from the cottage owners weren't very clear in that it sounded like from their directions we'd go straight from the M74 to the M8 but there was a bit of ordinary road (A8) between the 2 motorways. Once we were on the M8 the instructions were pretty clear, in fact they were better than the sat nav - mr tomtom was sending me towards the city centre but the cottage directions were directly opposite. i decided to ignore the satnav and the directions got us to the cottage fine.

The only problem was that my mum had read the very last bit wrong - she thought it said we had to knock at number 16 opposite for the keys, we went past nuber 16 and they were outsude anyway but they didn't seem to know anything about any keys but thankfully one of the men knew which cottage it was and told me where to park. We rang the owners from outside the cottage and it turns out they live next door.

The lady (Evelyn) took us all round the cottage telling us how to work the various things and then we basically settled down to do nothing for the evening ;-D Basically all we did was have tea and watch telly, oh and i played on my mum's Nintendo DS for a while. I went to bed at about 11.20pm and i actually slept a bit better than i often do on a first night n a strange bed :-)

8.50pm
We've been out to the city today but we haven't really done that much in the grand scheme of things. We decided to drive into Edinburgh cos Evelyn had said we'd probably be able to find somewhere to park cos it's sunday.

I programmed mr tomtom for a car park in the city but when we actually got there there were loads of roadworks and in the end i just headed for any random car park cos they were all signed. Unfortunately when we got into the car park we discovered the steep parking charges - £4 for up to 2 hours :-o We decided then we'd only stay for the up to 2 hours!! The car park was a bit strange, it was a multi-storey but that wasn't obvious from the road - you went in and then went down the levels rather than up as is the norm. As we'd been driving along we realised we'd left all the street maps in the cottage but as we found ourself at street level there was a map machine - unfortunately it wasn't working :-(

We headed off in a random direction but we really didn't know where we were going :-S We only really wandered round a bit, we went into Sainsbury's and a little newsagent. We'd seen a craft fair as we were on the way in and we came across it so we went in as the entrance was free :-) It was just a load of stalls but it was like a maze going up and down all over the place ;-D All we bought was 3 fridge magnets that were prints of paintings done on feathers - a cat, a scottish bagpiper and a pair of owls.

After that we realised we were at the other end of the street where the car park was so we waled up that way and it turned out we were really close and we'd simply done a large circle round the outskirts of the city 8| When we got back to the car park we had to find a pay machine - that was a job in itself. I actually asked at the enquiries office and it turned out there was a pay machine just at the top of the stairs. There was also another map machine there but i didn't have any more pound coins to get a map :-(

When we got back to the cottage we had lunch and then we played a game of Edinburgh Monopoly which is in the cottage - it was fun to see which places in Edinburgh are considered to be good or not so good ;-D There is also another game in the cottage but it's far too complicated to play :-S

We've had another lazy day since then, watching telly, eating, playing on the DS.

We've decided over tomorrow and tuesday we're going to do 2 of the sight-seeing tours, go round the museums and do the general touristy stuff in the city centre. Over Wednesday and Thursday we're going to choose some things to do which are not in the city centre. We've also decided we're going home on friday afternoon instead of saturday morning so that we're fresh and relaxed for going to Katie's party on the saturday :-)