I flew up from Dublin to Edinburgh ((Uneventful flight, Aer Lingus A320, 30 minutes late because of ATC delays at LHR.)) and after misunderstanding my directions and driving all around the airport (literally) I’ve arrived at my hotel: the Dakota Forthbridge, in South Queensferry.
It’s very trendy, and very comfortable. It’s extremely convenient: the Amazon.com office is two minutes walk from here. It’s also more than a little weird. From the outside, it’s a black Borg-like cube. The elevators (sorry, lifts) have chrome-framed “portholes” through which one can watch images of clouds boiling up against a blue sky. ((We’re not talking about fluffy white clouds drifting by; we’re talking about the kind of stuff that would cause a pilot to call ATC and request “immediate deviation 30 degrees left for weather”. If they’re intended to be restful, they fail.)) My room has a three foot high polished metal ampersand on the wall, and the chrome desk lamp is like a regular banker’s lamp but twice the usual size. There are no closets, cupboards or drawers; instead there are dark red alcoves hidden behind the headboard of the bed.
Annoyingly, Internet access is a £5/day extra, for which you must obtain a password from the front desk. Why do cheap hotels give you broadband for free while fancy places nickel-and-dime you? It makes no sense, and it just pisses off the customers.
More anon. Probably with pics.
UPDATE: (WARNING: Food porn alert!!)
OK, I forgive them everything – even the leather panelling with red stitching in the elevators. The restaurant is superb.
I ordered “roast lamb”, which turned out to be three loin chops, so pink that at first I thought “Oh, no! These are too rare even for me!”, but then they turned out to be quite perfect. They were garnished with wedges of grilled lamb’s liver, which worked very nicely indeed, and an intricate arrangement of thinly-sliced new potatoes, broad beans, and cranberries. Add a chicory and mustard salad and a glass of a Côtes du Rhône which quietly put California in its place, and finish with a cheese plate including three interesting Scottish cheeses and a stack of little oat cakes. (And of course the cheese demanded a nice glass of port.) The service was excellent, and almost every table was occupied, mostly by locals.
Wow.
UPDATE: The pics are here. If you squint at the screen of my MacBook, you’ll see that it’s displaying the picture that Crispin took of the Dakota, and that Clive mentioned in the comments.
