Day 14 - 20 Nov 14 - Edinburgh

We had our breakfast at 830am. Thereafter, we got ourselves ready and set off at about 10am. Our destination was Edinburgh and we braved ourselves for the next 3 hours plus without stopping for breaks. Thank God for His protection as during certain points of the journey, it rained and caused visibility to be a slight issue.

At 1pm plus, we arrived at our lunch venue in Edinburgh - The King's Wark in Leith. I had salmon fillet; the taste was superb and the salmon was meaty. After lunch, we walked a short distance to Printworks Coffee Company - a tiny little quaint cafe which serves Monmouth Espresso based coffee with double shots as standard - to get our much needed coffee to nurse ourselves from the exhaustion as well as the cold winter weather.

We left Leith and headed towards York Place apartment. It was about 4pm plus. We unloaded all our luggages before Franjoce and Emma drove off to top up the petrol for the cars before returning them to Hertz. The search for the petrol station was a painful one. We had initially thought it'd make no material price difference between topping up the petrol on our own before returning the cars vis-a-vis allowing Hertz to charge us for the differential. It turned out that upon clarification with Hertz, the price difference, in fact, could amount to approximately at least £1.5 per litre (or even more) which was pretty substantial. With this understanding, they topped up the petrol and returned the cars to Hertz thereafter. The rest of us just hanged around at the apartment and watched the kids while waiting for their return.

After Franjoce and Emma came back from Hertz, Franjoce and Denise proceeded to roam the streets while Peiks, Emma and I waited a couple of minutes later for the guy whom we rented the car seats from, to collect them in person at the apartment. Eventually, we left the apartment at 6pm.

Our shopping adventure began and we were very focused. Emma needed to get a pair of boots and she targeted at Jones Bootmaker which was located along George Street. In the end, she got herself a pair of boots while I got myself a pair of working shoes. We then meandered along the streets of Frederick, Princes and Hanover. Dinner was supposed to be at Jamie's Italian along George Street with everyone but as the reservation was at 8pm (and we were already done with our shopping by 7pm), we figured it'd be better for us to have dinner first so that we could go back earlier.

We tried to dine at Jamie's Italian as walk-ins at 715pm so that we could "bump into" the rest at 8pm but the restaurant was full. We tried Hard Rock Cafe but it was full as well. Now, we were desperate for a dining venues and as we walked along Hanover Street, we came across a serendipitous find at Chez Jules, a bistro that serves French food. I had my craving for French onion soup satisfied and my mains, which was rump steak with garlic butter sauce, was equally matchless.

We ended dinner at 845pm. We then went to Sainsbury to get our sandwiches for tomorrow's breakfast and headed back to the apartment after that. Back in our room, we settled our kids and then rested for the night.