There it is, my secret new hotel prayer to the sleeping god – we’ll call him “Phan”. You see Cindy has this thing when we travel about “air flow” and how there must be “air flow” or for without said air flow there are serious sleeping disorders that appear in the night – which of course results in me having a sleeping disorder in the night. Largely, Cindy can’t sleep.

So…. we have arrived in Scotland (Edinburgh) and it’s been great – last night starting at 12:24 (i looked at my watch) my REM sleep went to “you’re up” when the lights came on and windows were being opened… the dreaded “there’s no airflow” comment was made and yes my prayer was not answered by “Phan”. Fast forward to the thermostat control panel where it might had well be the disarming of a nuclear bomb – buttons being pressed, nothing happening – random lights going on/off, fans going high/low, etc. but in the end, the code could not be cracked and “Phan” had not delivered. Finally Cindy went down to the front desk, the guy came up, pressed the “disarm” button on the bomb and something started making noise. In my wishful thinking I went back to bed thinking “fixed”.

About an hour later, the revenge of “Phan” came back, where by the airflow was not good enough. Conveniently a telephone was nearby and by pressing “0” the same person that came to our room had found the answers to my prayers “Phan”. Five minutes later “Phan” was plugged in, making some squeaky noises on high, but the effect was excellent. Back to bed, back to sleep, guessing about 3:30 a.m. Conveniently, we are staying right next to the bars on the street where folks were clearly out drinking until 1-2 a.m. and the street sweeper showed up at 2:30 am as well – so while “Phan” worked out in the end, he didn’t go all the way… We got up at 9 🙂

On a serious note, we did make our walking tour today which was excellent. We typically do these free walking tours in places, in the end you tip, so not all that free – but the people are nice. A two hour tour walked us around the castle, saw some history, learned new things and took some fun pictures. There was a dog named Bobby who patrolled an old cemetery with his owner at night (night watchman) – but his owner died, but Bobby stayed for years – lived until 17… The city passed an ordinance that all dogs needed papers, but Bobby didn’t have an owner… but the entire town went down to the Mayors office in protest – the Mayor signed the papers and the City of Edinburgh owned Bobby. So he’s a celebrated hero. Note that this is in the 1800’s…

Other cool stuff, lots of brew spots, as well as desert, cake related items here in Scotland so far. The weather is a bit colder today, not terrible, but we need to get used to it. The castle sits on top of the old volcano that is here – looks like a crazy fortress impossible to defeat I’m sure – with one sheer rock wall hundreds of feet high.

The food choices so far have been off my normal “low carb” diet for sure – which is fine – probably need to add some lbs back anyway. There’s a distinct lack of “greens” on your table at the pub – but the food is good nonetheless.

I canceled my calls on Friday so we could have a more engaging day – we’ve both been working about half the time, so now just want to call it PTO and take some time for ourselves. Lots of cashmere shops to check out, and pictures of highland cows to peruse. If you’re looking for a nice heavy, thick suit or sportscoat this is definitely the place.