Definitely the prettiest city of the trip. Went to Edinburgh Castle and learned that the site has been continuously occupied for 3000 years, although most of the buildings are pretty new. I spent a lot of the time considering it as an inspiration for Hogwarts.

No one wears heels in Scotland. I saw one other woman in heeled boots in Edinburgh and she had a suitcase. Even women going out clubbing were wearing flats with their short skirts. It was definitely a challenge walking on the cobblestone streets in my boots, and there's no way stilettos would work there. I did buy a pair of flat boots, which I've been wearing every day in Paris.

We walked around aimlessly quite a bit, window shopping and exploring. Then, since we had a long drive to Cardiff, we left early in the afternoon for The SOUTH.

Have I mentioned that the road signs in Britain have reinforced my belief that Winterfell is in Scotland? Going there on the motorway, all the signs say things like:

M6
The NORTH
Glasgow

Now I'm just imagining the signs on Westeros
Kingsroad
The NORTH
Winterfell
The Wall

We drove out to the Isle of Skye and around it. There are a few farms, but it's very wild there, and mostly devoid of trees except where they've been planted in farms. We headed back over the bridge, which the proprietor of our B&B in Fort William told us used to be a toll bridge and people protested for years by not paying and being arrested until finally they made it free. Stayed in a hotel in Kyle, which was a wholly unremarkable little town where we had unremarkable dinner and left in the morning for Inverness.

Moving into the Highlands, everything is hillier and more desolate. We did, after a little backtracking, find the bridge that the Hogwarts Express goes over. Other than that, still some sheep. Fort William is right below the tallest mountain in Britain (at 4,400 feet), which although it’s not very high looks pretty impressive because it’s near the ocean so the land around is close to sea level. There’s been a path up the mountain, which we did not hike, for over a century. The fact that they once drove a Model T up it is impressive. The existence of the mountain did not particularly impress me, because I am spoiled and can see a mountain three times as high from the top of my street at home.

There’s a history museum in Fort William, where I finally learned what the fuss about the Jacobites is. Also that changes in the clan system in the 1700s and 1800s, when clan leaders centralized farming, eventually destroyed the old way of life and reduced the population. We saw a lot of emptiness and plenty of old farm ruins.

We went to a pub, had some local beer that K thought was boring but I liked (I suspect he finds anything that isn’t Guiness boring), and listened to some folk music. I don’t think I’ve ever heard bagpipes playing recognizable songs, accompanied by other instruments even, so that was new.

Trying to catch up...

We came, we ate the best Indian food I’ve ever had, went to a non-exciting museum in a gorgeous building that looks like a haunted castle at night, we left.

Well, there’s a little more, because that day we went with L to the airport for her flight home, rented a car there, and drove from there to Scotland. The countryside was, unsurprisingly, picturesque and full of sheep. Encountered our first castle, which was nicely free of visitor’s center/gift shop/charge but still had a helpful sign with historical information.

Shopping in Camden. Still did not find the perfect femme!Jack Harkness shoes. Did buy a read leather coat for a truly embarassingly ridiculous amount of money.

Spent about an hour in the National Portrait Gallery, which was not quite as boring as I thought it would be. No portrait of Ada Lovelace, though :(

We found a place to go swing dancing, which I think K and L actually enjoyed more than me. Technically there were three dance floors as advertised, but they were small nightclubby dance floors surrounded by crowds of people drinking and walking through the dance floor. Not enough space to really show off. Everyone was dressed up, which was great for K to have something to look at, but I didn't get to dance with many good dancers and they weren't particularly friendly. There was a guy dressed in a pink satin shirt, pink bowtie, pink petticoats, pink knee breeches, pink fishnet stockings, and a pink streak in his hair. I'm not sure what the occasion was but he was a good dancer and all the ladies were asking him.

Sunday I went to the National Gallery while K&L went back to the British Museum. I don't see why one would want to look at more ancient artifacts when they could be seeing two whole rooms of Rubens, but I suppose that's why we're different people. I had 2 hours and had to hurry through the later things.

We had a reservation for afternoon tea at a hotel restaurant which was perfectly serviceable, and meet our main qualification: must contain cucumber sandwiches. Then walked around Kensington Gardens in the rain, saw the Peter Pan statue, went to Earl's Court tube station just to see the police box there. It doesn't look exactly like the TARDIS but close enough! They installed it in 1996, possibly around the time the BBC was trying to copyright the design.

Then we stopped by the purple bar, which is all purple and tiny chairs. L loves purple and enjoyed this and paid happily for the £15 purple martini we split. Our next mission was consuming our daily sausages, which is never a problem because there's always a pub somewhere. I fell asleep after that. I think they went to dinner but I wasn't hungry.

Today, the Tower of London! Where I will not be thinking about Moriarty's and the Crown Jewels, I swear. Well, maybe. It would fit into our mandatory Doctor Who/Sherlock/Hitchhiker's Guide/Discworld discussion per hour. Appropriate since L and I have only experienced Britain through fiction.

Culture shock: no recycling. It is so hard to bring ourselves to throw glass bottles in the trash.

Most impressive thing about London: functional public transit! I don't feel like a martyr every time I use it! Cementing my belief that transit and cars are actually opposed and the only way to have really good transit is to make it inconvenient to drive. Which is never going to happen in most parts of the US. I will now argue with my friends with more vigor when they complain about rising parking costs. The problem at hone is that suburban areas are built for cars and will never have functional transit and people will go there instead if the city because they are afraid of buses.

I'm serious about the bus thing. People will take disgusting, creepy subways, but still be afraid of buses.

So to put this in context: arrived in Central London after 15-16 hours traveling, on 4 hours of sleep in the last 40 hours. So everything I did was following K and L around in a sleep deprived state.

We're staying in a funky hotel just south of Camden, near St. Pancras. By funky, I mean our room is on the ground floor with big windows directly looking out on the street, and it's a trip through twisty little passages, all alike, and 6 fire doors, to get to it. And the wifi here only works in the lounge, not the rooms. So I'll be online about once a day. Also, our room has a double bed and a set of bunk beds.

We walk in.

"I'll take the bunk bed."

"I sleep in a bunk bed now."

In chorus, L and I: "Bunk beds are cool"

We checked out the neighborhood, immediately found a gay & lesbian bookstore and spent 15 minutes lusting after their huge history section, had perfectly decent Indian food for lunch. I have made a blanket refusal to eat fish & chips. I don't like white fish and I don't like chips, so. Then we went to a museum that in my sleep deprived fugue I don't remember the name of. It's the free one with lots of sculpture. She wanted to go to the fashion gallery, which was closed for renovations, and then I wanted to look at the Rafael stuff, which was also closed for renovations, so we ended up spending some time with their lovely collection of Rodin sculpture and then finding somewhere to have tea.

In the evening, we went to see "All New People," the Zach Braff play. We chose this solely on the basis of Eve Myles (Gwen on Torchwood) being in it. It was wonderful and dark and funny and after 30 seconds I was no longer thinking of Torchwood, which is a good advertisement for her acting. I mean, the first scene is she walks in on Zach Braff's character when he's about to hang himself. So. Awesome!

Then we had tapas and I went and hugged my bed and slept and it was wonderful.

Ok, have to go decide what we're going to do today. Waves from London at everyone.