Scotland #3 – Disaster Strikes

There’s something that’s going on that makes me think me and Edinburgh, or even Scotland as a whole, isn’t going to work.

Well, we had our bag delay. Okay, blame Air France on that.

Still… what happened today? well, shall I start from the beginning?

So, it’s another nice warm day with cold winds.

We start our day at 9am and since we took the bus 22 back and it was a lot faster than the 36, we thought we’d try the 16. Only two 22’s passed and we decided we’d wait no more for the 16.

So off to town we went.

Back at the next stretch of the Princes Gardens, that we liked so much, we discovered the flower clock in the theme befitting the Olympics 2012. They change the design of the clock twice a year.

Edinburgh Castle looked quite nice up on the rock with Princes Gardens below it. So more photos were taken.

Then we saw the red bricked Caledonian Hotel. Then we went on to the New Town area, starting with all the expensive houses and their private shared gardens.

All nice. Then around 10am, my father fell down. Just tripped and fell and hurt himself bad.

Rushed to one hospital, the Great Western, where we were told they had good dentist. Arrived. Told the last dentist they had there was 15 years ago. They helped clean my father’s face up. Then off to Chalmers Street Dentist, across town.

Here, my father got three stitches in his lip where his teeth gashed the inside of his mouth. And then two teeth extracted. Roots intact ’cause they broke right at the gum line and they decided it was just too rushed to put him into surgery.

Long story short. 4-5 hours in hospitals, running around, going to get medicine etc.

But, I gotta say, the Scottish NHS is pretty good. I mean, stiches, x-ray, extractions and they apologised that because they didn’t have any agreement with Singapore and so couldn’t give a subsidised rate – that they’d have to treat us as a private patient – 65 pounds. Yes. 65 pounds.

Let’s compare that to Singapore’s charges. According to my bill that I get, if I were a private patient visiting the National Dental Centre, to clean my teeth would cost S$70, excluding consumables.

They printed out a photocopy of the x-ray just in case we needed a follow up in Scotland. They then printed out a detailed breakdown of charges so that it’d be easier for us to get insurance done.

And all the while, very gentle, very patient, very personable care.

So, pretty much the day was gone.

3:30m, finally had lunch. Ate at Cafe Italia along Lothian Street. Supposedly winner of some Highland ice cream award. Well deserved. Ice cream was good. Had the Canollo, made of ricotta cheese and rolled up into some pastry. What was a nice extra was the orange peel that made the ricotta less jelak. It was good. Food was okay. Had the veal and parma ham. Very salty. But otherwise okay.

Decided to try and see if could get car early. Hurray! Yes we could.

4:30pm back on the bus. We take the 16. Goes the same route as the 22.

5:15pm we get a cab to get the rental car. Car rental company says it’s a new car, I’m the first to drive it. It has 82 miles on it. It looks like it had a lot of dust on it. I don’t believe I’m the first.

Manual drive. Gotta remember the clutch!

The only good thing is – what I planned to do tomorrow – Queensferry – I did today.

Because I had the car, decided to a bit more driving on manual car. So I saw the Forth Bridge.

Returned to apartment. Ate at the King’s Werk just 10 steps away from apartment. Supposedly on Michelin Guides a 2010 and 2011. Had pulled pork and black pudding. Not bad. I quite like black pudding especially with applesauce on it. Father had haggis. Not bad too, althoughlamb flavour is rather strong.

Tomorrow we leave Edinburgh. Things are starting to look up already.