Month: February 2019

We took the train to Edinburgh from London, a pleasant five hour trip through the green English countryside and then along the southeast coast of Scotland. Edinburgh is an old city with a medieval castle dominating the downtown skyline, high on the top of a volcanic crag. We’ll talk more about the old city in a subsequent blog post but this post covers our new neighborhood and some of the things we have discovered there. As always in our travels, the most interesting things are the little things.

As the population of Edinburgh expanded in the 18th century the leaders planned a new section of the city to the north of the castle called New Town. Beautiful Georgian architecture and small parks dominate New Town, and many people consider it to be the most beautiful part of the city. Our apartment is in the northern part of the new area, on Elm Row in the Leith Walk district just to the north of Calton Hill (for those of you who may know Edinburgh). Our building was built around 1820 and, of course, has been remodeled with all the modern conveniences such as indoor plumbing and wifi.

Our apartment is below street level, with a small courtyard at the entrance and another small courtyard in the back. Semi-basement apartments are common in older buildings throughout the UK, and they are very pleasant. Our location is perfect – off the beaten tourist path but close to anything we might want to see. About a dozen bus lines stop right at our corner.

We have enjoyed exploring our neighborhood and seeing how things are done in Scotland. The photos below show some scenes in our neighborhood. Click on the first photo to begin the slide show.

On our way to our next apartment in Edinburgh, Scotland, we flew to London and spent five days there as tourists. We had never been to London so it was an adventure to explore this beautiful city. Our hotel was in the borough of Islington, to the north of central London and not far from the Kings Cross Railway Station of Harry Potter fame. Islington is a trendy neighborhood with lots of good restaurants, which we enjoyed. Coincidentally, it is also home to a yarn store that Carrie wanted to visit. Our midwinter visit to London was like springtime, with sunny days and high temperatures around 60F. The locals were out in the parks enjoying the weather. One day toward the end of our visit registered the highest wintertime temperature ever recorded in the UK, 20.6C in Wales. The record was broken the very next day!

On our first day in London we were a little bit tired and jet lagged so we opted for an easy day and a boat cruise down the Thames to Greenwich. It was a warm and sunny day so we sat on the top deck and enjoyed seeing the sights of London from the river. Lunch was street food from a Thai food vendor in the Greenwich Market.

On another day we took a bus tour of London. Our stay was brief and London is huge so a bus tour allowed us to sample many parts of the city in a single day. London is indeed a spectacular city.

We spent a day at the Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, about a 30 minute train ride outside of London. Originally a royal palace garden, Kew has been a public botanical garden for almost two centuries. It has beautiful landscaping and several large conservatories (greenhouses) that house exotic plants that would not be able to survive the harsh English climate. The gardens are a short walk from the train station through the village of Kew, and along the way we passed a small bakery selling their baked goods at an open air stall. We couldn’t resist a couple of English meat pies so we bought them and had them for our lunch as we were enjoying the gardens.

We spent one day in Westminster, near the Parliament buildings. We especially enjoyed a tour of the Churchill War Rooms, an underground bunker beneath one of the government buildings that was used for six years during the German bombing of London during WWII. The bunker had everything needed to run the government, including office space, a map room for charting the course of the war, and eating and sleeping accommodations. There is also a small museum dedicated to the life of Winston Churchill. After lunch we toured Westminster Abbey, which houses the graves of many famous British figures. Stephen Hawking, who died in 2018, is buried next to Isaac Newton. Hawking’s most famed equation describing the black hole is inscribed on his gravestone. Westminster Abbey is often crowded with tourists but we were fortunate to be there on a decidedly uncrowded day. It was a midwinter weekday, plus there was a taxi strike demonstration in the adjacent Parliament Square so the tour buses could not get near.

On our final day in London we visited the Tower of London, almost a thousand years old. It was the center of old London. During its history it has served as a royal residence, the Royal Mint, the London Zoo, a prison, and the site of many famous executions. It also houses the Crown Jewels, which are very impressive. Beefeaters in full costume provide entertaining tours of the tower grounds. Legend holds that ravens provide good luck to the tower, and a small group of ravens lives on site, with one wing clipped to allow them to fly only short distances to perch. The ravens seem accustomed to people and will perch close by. They have a distinctive guttural call.

We chose to spend the winter in sunny California. We began with a couple of weeks in the Sacramento area, which allowed us to do some chores (appointments, visiting our storage unit, etc.) and to celebrate Andy’s December birthday. We rented a house in Orangevale, across Lake Natoma from the historic Gold Rush city of Folsom. We enjoyed walks along the lakefront and we even saw bald eagles nesting in a tree not far from our house. We also had a chance to see beautiful Christmas decorations on a stroll through the upscale “Fabulous Forties” neighborhood in Sacramento. The neighborhood association goes all-out to decorate the entire neighborhood for the holidays.

We spent Christmas with our family in Camarillo. We rented a small house in Silver Strand, a half block from the beach in Oxnard, and Andy joined us there for a few days. We took along Christmas stockings and some of our decorations to make the place look like home for the holidays.

We spent January in San Diego. Carrie’s cousin lives in Las Vegas and she and her husband have a condo in San Diego that they generously let us use for a month. We drove to Las Vegas to have a short family visit and to pick up the keys, and then we were off to San Diego. The condo is on the edge of downtown so we had an urban experience, which was very pleasant considering that San Diego bills itself as “America’s Finest City.” We enjoyed the shorts-and-t-shirt weather, making it seem more like spring than winter.

We took long walks almost every day. One of our first treks was to the Tijuana River Estuary, a wildlife sanctuary at the ocean, just north of the Mexican border. The river begins in Mexico and flows northward into the US, where it empties into the Pacific. The delta wetlands are a natural bird refuge, but we didn’t see many birds on our visit. The nearby hills of Tijuana form an urban backdrop to the idyllic wildlife preserve.

We walked in La Jolla several times. There is a long walkway along the ocean front at the top of the cliffs. We looked down on sea lions and birds at the beach.

We took a day trip out to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, about a two hour drive east of San Diego. We had never been to this park so we wanted to take advantage of it while we were in San Diego. The park preserves a beautiful piece of California desert land. It seemed like the Palm Springs area might have been before development took over. We enjoyed an orientation at the visitor center followed by a desert hike after lunch.

We had never been on campus at San Diego State University (SDSU) so we decided to take a walk there on a weekend when it wasn’t crowded with students. We were very impressed with the beautiful campus. SDSU is over a hundred years old and it features a number of old buildings built in the mission architectural style. Beautiful southwestern gardens are interspersed among the buildings.

Our friends Sue and Leo came to San Diego to visit Sue’s college friend, Mary, and we all spent the day at the San Diego Zoo, one of the finest zoos in the world. We had not been to the zoo in many years so it was fun to return. We also enjoyed several of our daily walks in Balboa Park, the home of the zoo. Balboa Park hosted the Panama-California Exposition in 1915 to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal, and most of the exposition buildings remain. It was a treat to walk through the park and see these magnificent old buildings.