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May 20, 1999
Day 5
Scotland we are coming. We did a lot of driving this day with 3 or 4 stops along the way to Edinburgh. First was in the town of Thirsk were Keith and I found an antique shop and spent all of our time. I am not sure why we stopped there... something about All Creatures Great or Small is what I heard but...?? So from there we went to have lunch and see part of Hadrian's Wall, which was built by the Romans to hold the Picts in the north. This did not work and that is why the Romans left this whole area. Those wild Picts painted blue and attacking the Romans over and over convinced the Romans to abandon the North and what is now Scotland. From there we went to see Jedburgh Abbey and the home were Mary Queen of Scots lived for a while. The country side here is wonderful. We are a little further west from where I was the week before in Duns. The Country side here has very little trees and tons of heather waiting to come into bloom in August. Shortly we were on our way to Edinburgh (my home away from home). We came into the West side of town and settled into the Hotel. Our place is nice and roomy. This was the night to do laundry. We got down stairs and found out when we called the launderette that they had closed. In the end the lady at the launderette said that she would help us out by waiting for us to get there and then taking our laundry and doing it the next morning while we were on our Edinburgh tour. Once we got off the phone our mission was to call a cab and get to the launderette as quickly as possible. I was outside waiting and saw a cab sitting there. I can't begin to explain what happened in these few sentences. But in a nut shell we had the best cab in all of Edinburgh, Scotland and the whole world. This Cab was painted like a tartan... but not just any tartan. It was the Flower of Scotland Tartan. This is a rare tartan in that it is not a clan tartan. Rob Roberts the cab driver asked for the privilege to put it on his cab. He told us all about the history of how he was able to get that privilege and how the tartan came to be. Plus he told us about the two movies that he and the cab have been in. All to quickly we were at the launderette and to our surprise the lady came out and offered to take our laundry right from the cab as we were trying to get some pictures before Rob and his tartan cab left. Once Rob found out that we were going to just do a walk about in the area he would not hear of it. He "told" us to do our business with the lady at the launderette and than he was going to give us 20 minutes of his time. Well we got back in the cab and Rob took us all over the city. He stop at certain sites and would either turn around and tell us these incredible stories or get us out of the cab all together. Most of the people in Scotland have a lot of pride in their country and cities but Rob tops them all. He loved telling the stories and he enjoyed seeing us enjoy his country and mostly Edinburgh. At the end of 30 to 40 minutes of a free tour in a one of a kind cab in the whole world Rob dropped us off on Princes Street. From there we went and got something to eat and then we headed down to Dean's Village. This is an area that use to be part of a mill and now all the old buildings have be turned into apartments. From there we made our way back to the castle area and caught a bus back to the hotel and crashed for the evening.
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