Our last complete day in Scotland. Does the sun come out to tantalize us with what might have been these past three weeks? It does … of course it does. And then disappears again. Undaunted, we bus ourselves to one of Queen Elizabeth’s favorite homes-away-from-homes: The Royal Yacht Britannia, so christened in 1953.

About the size and shape of a classic WWII destroyer, the ship has royal apartments, royal dining rooms, royal state rooms, royal bedrooms, royal bars, royal living rooms, royal parlors, royal tea rooms and a royal sundeck in the aft half. The 250-plus crew get the other half when they are not cleaning every dial, lever, stopcock, and surface on the boat to a you-can-eat-off-it luminescence.

We take the third Uber of our entire trip to the main entrance of the Old Calton Burial Ground, ahhhnother cemetery across the road from Calton Hill. In the Burial Ground, the philosopher David Hume lies in his rather large circular tomb and the five campaigners for parliamentary reform and universal sufferage who were summarily sent in 1793 to Botany Bay, Australia, have their names inscribed on the Political Martyrs’ Monument, a tall, dark, imposing obelisk.

Calton Hill across the road boasts the tallest monument in Edinburgh: the “upturned-telescope” tower memorializing Vice-Admiral Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson’s 1805 victory and death at Trafalgar. 360-degree views over all of Edinburgh: the Firth of Forth, Arthur’s Seat, parliament, the length of Princes Street … soooo much stone. Lovely place.

We move back into centre city to see the Writers’ Museum, which has rooms devoted to Robert Burns, Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson. We saw, to quote the museum’s website, “the press on which Scott’s Waverley Novels were printed, a chair used by Burns to correct proofs at William Smellie’s printing office, and Stevenson’s wardrobe made by the infamous Deacon Brodie whose double life may have inspired the novel The strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Then we wandered the streets in search of bottle shops so we could secrete exotic Scottish gins in our luggage, rather than limit ourselves to the usual suspects in the airport’s duty-free shop. Cynthia goes off to buy hats as well. And we end the evening at the Sardinian Restaurant, Isola, where we are seated next to Andy and Judy from Bath, England, and run into Robert Kyle and Alyse Korn again. David has Negronis and we all have chats while the waitress – the restaurant’s sole waitress who also is the bartender and sous-chef – takes care of ALL the tables and about 70 customers, chatting merrily with each table as her fiancée – the only cook in the place – prepares all the items for everyone. Two whirlwinds. Amazing.

The waitress recommends that Cynthia try the Fiocchi di Pera e Taleggio – fiocchetti with minced pear and ricotta filling in a parmesan cream with diced carrots – a dish we will now order at EVERY possible opportunity. And recommends that we try a red wine called Korem from Isola dei Nuraghi (Sardinian-speak for Sardinia … made from Bovale, Carignan and Cannonau grapes … yummy). 

Whatta meal! At the end, she brings us complimentary glasses of Misto: macerated red myrtle berries. Delicious. And we walk a few blocks back to our guest house where David realizes you lose things as you get old. Memories may be the most precious. But leaving your new Apple iPro 13 with all the pictures from your yet unfinished trip is the most impractical. He runs back toward the restaurant and encounters Any and Judy who say, “We have it. We’re staying at the same guest house. We were going to bring it to you.”

Ain’t travel just … amazing.