Edinburgh

You were expecting maybe a castle?

I spent my first afternoon in the city watching something a little more exotic, something your average visitor to Edinburgh never gets to see: Scots sunbathing.

After tramping up and down Princes Street looking for a hotel that stubbornly refused to be where the map in my hand indicated, and the elusive hotel's refusal to make it up to me by allowing me to check in early, I had plenty of time to sit in the Princes Street Gardens watching the natives enjoy the unusually hot sunny weather.

The kids were having fun. The ice cream stands were doing great business. But most of the adults looked a little dazed, as if they didn't quite know what to make of it all.