Steam Train in the Lake District

You get the morning routine by now...

• 7am: bags out and breakfast
• 8am: on the bus, headed towards The Lake District  

The Lake District of England is like the Hamptons of New York, to me - kind of the place where all the hoity-toity folks go for vacation and own a cabin...except by "cabin", I mean "mansion" or "castle". 😂

The largest lake in the district is Lake Windermere. We stopped here for an optional activity that I think everyone in the tour joined us for. We were dropped off at a quaint train station to enjoy scones with jam and clotted cream, tea and hot chocolate. 

We then boarded a steam train for a jaunty ride through the countryside to the top end of the lake. 

There, we boarded a boat for the return trip over the water. 

That's the ship, in all that scenery...

This is where we got to see the most flaunting of wealth with all the giant houses overlooking the lake. Our guide told us that the homes here were specifically built extra-large in order to show off wealth and position in society, and it showed. 

Back in town, we were left on our own to find lunch. We followed sidewalk signs advertising burgers and fries to "folk", which N calls "a super cute internet cafe with lots of doggos and the chocoliatest hot cocoa anywhere in the world ever." The food was good, but the staff made this a 10/10 recommended place to grab a bite, if you're ever in the area!
This was the only day I can remember that we actually got rained on...the walk back to the coach was a bit damp, but we made it just before the deluge started and caught most of our group still outside. 

We left this charming spot in the early afternoon to make our way to Edinburgh. 

Sound on for this one! You get to hear our Travel Director's sense of humour! 

We arrived in Edinburgh around 4pm, and checked in to the hotel. The Apex hotel chain has this promotional gimmick; they give you a rubber duck (named Bob🙄) and ask you to take it with you on your travels, take pictures and share them on social media.  We have friends who do this with a sparkling blue rubber duck already, and it made me think of their "adventures" with their duck. (Said friend has informed me that the duck "is sparklY, not sparklING. 😜") I guess it's a "thing"?!? 

We were left on our own to find dinner and explore the town. Sadly, as we've learned before, most things close up around 5-6pm in Europe, except for restaurants. We got to see just one souvenir shop before everything else was closed. N had lamented earlier in the day that she hadn't eaten a noodle in over a week, so we found an Italian restaurant right across the street from our hotel and had some delicious pasta and garlic bread (garlic is another rare spice in England and Ireland!), and then wandered the streets for some window shopping before bed. 

We were so far north now that it was still bright out by 11pm - it really threw our internal clocks off! Several nights we ended up in bed much later than we thought because it still felt like "only" 8pm.