Day 3: First day of CIE Tour September 1

Today we met up with the tour group at the Marriott Dalmahoy Hotel. After breakfast and packing, we had the hotel call a taxi for us and were there in less than 30 minutes.

The grounds of this hotel are gorgeous! It looks like a castle. There are two golf courses on site and it has a "leisure center," with a pool and spa (which in Scotland means a steam room and sauna, no whirlpool or hot tub). It was a bit of a maze getting from our room to the lobby and we found it easier to just go outside to get to the front doors.

Marriott Dalmahoy, Kirknewton, Edinburgh

We checked in, got settled and met up with our tour director at the appointed time. Then on the bus to be whisked off for our first tour - to see the Royal Yacht Britannia, now docked in Leith, Edinburgh. Our tour guide, John Shaw, must have given us lots of information on the way there, but I remember very little except that we had such a short amount of time to explore once we got to our destination.

The Royal Yacht Britannia is the yacht that was used by Queen Elizabeth from 1953 until it was decommissioned in 1997. It is now a tourist attraction, complete with memorabilia from the days the royal family used the yacht to sail around the world and entertain dignitaries. We were given audio guides that looked like old style car phones, to use as we toured the yacht, but, unfortunately, we learned at this stop that time is never allowed to do the whole sight-seeing routine. Later, more experienced travelers gave us this advice: you have time to: a) go to the bathroom; b) see the sight; c) eat; or d) shop. If you get two of these accomplished during the allotted time you are fortunate.  By the end of the trip we planned ahead and learned to not waste time doing any of the two we chose, most often bathroom and one other!

The Queen's Sleeping quarters

Prince Phillip's Sleeping Quarters. Yes, the bed is as short and narrow as it looks in the picture.

Pictures of Princess Diana and Prince Charles were displayed in numerous places around the yacht.

The yacht, including the dining room, can be rented out for private parties.

The room where most entertaining took place.

Since we only had an hour, we rushed through the audio guide and hurried out without even time to glance around the gift shop.The entrance to, and, of course, exit from, the Royal Yacht Britannia is through a shopping mall and it was a bit confusing to find our way out. Fortunately we found some other people from our tour who were as confused as we were and we all found our way to the bus together. Forget having time to even look to see what stores were in this mall, though I did catch a glimpse at some familiar names from the U.S., for instance, Gap.

When we were delivered back to our hotel, it was time to meet up for "welcome and introductions." The meeting was in an area outside the dining room, two adjoining rooms that made up a lounge area. We were given a choice of beer or wine as a "complementary" drink. Of course, we did pay for it, but, having paid for the tour in advance it was nice to have it served "free." Our tour director/bus driver, Dick McBride, gave us the low down. In the back room where we sat there was another group of people, not with the tour, who had no reason to be quiet. Even with our cute little green audio boxes it was difficult to hear our instructions. There was no introducing us to each other, then, or at any other time. As an educator, I found this quite odd. We'd be spending time with these people for the next 15 days, but all we had by way of getting to know one another were name tags with first names only which many people chose not to wear after day one. We did get to chat with a few people before and after the "introduction," which was mainly a "do this, don't do that" set of directions! It turned out there were a total of forty-three people on our tour though some had not yet arrived. In fact, there were a handful of people we never spoke with on the entire trip. Lesson learned: book a tour with under 30 if we ever do this again. For more reasons than one. More on that later.

After deciding that paying for one taxi a day was enough, Bob and I chose to have dinner in the hotel cafe. This hotel was not within walking distance of any other place to get a meal, so we felt a bit stranded, but the food was good. I later spent some time in the lobby uploading pictures. Why is it that the more expensive the hotel, the least likely they are to have free wi-fi? I believe it was approximately $10/day in our room, but free in the public areas of the hotel.

Surprises:

• Not nearly enough time for our tour of the Royal Yacht Britannia (calculating what we would have paid independently for tours, the senior rate is £12.50) Hint for CIE: add up the lengths of time to listen to each section of the audio guide, then add just a few minutes, or don't hand out the audio guides at all!
• It's not just one hotel that has two twin beds shoved close together and, we also learned, no top sheet on the beds! Not good when there is no control for temperature in the room.
• We still have teeny tiny teaspoons and much larger spoons. Nothing the size of our teaspoons.
• We missed Forbes! We were not very happy with a somewhat brusque dismissal of our complaints about the lack of time for our tour.