We spent the first week of the girls' Christmas vacation up in Edinburgh. We all had a good time, and the weather even cooperated and provided the kids with their first snowfall. We definitely want to get back there during warmer weather (and more daylight!). It's a beautiful city, and there's far more to see than we could do in a week. Glaringly obvious things we missed: Holyrood, and Arthur's Seat (seen here in the distance from the top of the castle).

We took the train both ways, splurging a bit on first class for the return journey. The Brits love to gripe about their rail service, but compared to the mostly non-existence of such service in the States, we've been quite happy with the trains here. Given British roads, it was definitely easier to get to Edinburgh by train, instead of by car.

We stayed in a beautiful Georgian apartment in a circus (circular street) in New Town, within walking distance to most everywhere. The bathroom had been redone and the very small kitchen had some strange but perfectly efficient German appliances. The apartment was next to an area of the city called Stockbridge, which is full of speciality delis, restaurants, and little shops. Alan and the girls also managed to find a great playground on one of their walks. One of the pleasures of self-catering (as they call this type of holiday apartment rentals) is that you aren't forced to go out to eat for all your meals. Instead, we indulged ourselves with lovely meats and cheeses from the deli, Scottish smoked salmon, and of course, whiskey by fire in the evening. Would you believe that at one of those delis, we also found the best tortilla chips in Great Britain (we think)? Seems residents of ol' Reeky (nickname for Edinburgh) love Mexican food. Go figure.

From a Castle cannonport looking Northeast towards Scott Monument, and, of course, the ferris wheel.

During the week, we celebrated the Winter Solstice and the most of Chanukah. We even bought and decorated a tiny Yule tree, which made it all the way back to Cambridge with us only to freeze to death later in the winter, poor thing. The girls also got to see their first Nutcracker in a lovely little production by the Royal Scottish Ballet.

One of the first things we did was take the tourbus to get a handle on the size and scope of what we might be able to see in a week. This is the same company which runs the Cambridge tourbus, one of the London tours and loads of other cities. Not cheap, but a quick and dirty way to put reference points in one's head.

Edinburgh has some fabulous architecture, including its share of monuments like this ostentatious and bizarre gothic tower monument to Sir Walter Scott which dominates over some the beautiful Prince Edward's Gardens. And of course in these gardens which used to be a moat for the castle (see below), there was a Christmas Fun Faire (seemingly unavoidable everywhere we go on holiday: see our trip to France) with a huge ferris wheel and plenty of kiddy rides.

We felt required (partly by our own enjoyment of the water of life, but also by our large number of friends who are similarly inclined) to visit the very touristy Whisky Heritage Museum where we rode a goofy fake half-barrel at a speed of about 2 miles per month around a giggle-inducing diorama of the history of scotch. Still (no pun intended), it wasn't a waste of time. When I asked Rowyn later how to make scotch, she correctly parroted the voiceover from the ride: "barley, water and time". Years later, maybe she'll wonder why there's no thyme in scotch.