It’s been a busy 2 weeks in Great Britain.  We managed to see a bit of London, get a car for 3 months, pick up our golf clubs at the Port, drive north through England to Scotland, rent an apartment, and move in.  Still haven't found a golf club to join yet, but here in Edinburgh that may be impossible.

London was great.  We stayed 4 days with Alex and Andy, who were wonderful hosts -- leaving us to do as we pleased, good company when we were all home, and excellent sources of information about London and Great Britain.  Their flat is most  conveniently located right smack in the middle of London, and their son had a car, which we rented.  Talk about things working out.  We toured some of London's many sights, gawking at Big Ben and the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.  Really, London Town looks terrific, all cleaned up for the millennium.  We enjoyed the London production of the Lion King, a cartoon come alive on the theater stage.  Quite amazing.

Our suitcase and golf clubs, which we had shipped from Australia, arrived late, so we hung around until they were ready to be picked up.  Aside from the unexpected $90 we had to pay the shipping company for various docking fees, they also wanted another $90 to get our three bags through customs.  We figured we could manage that ourselves, but as it turned out, it's not as easy as one might think.  We drove through London and out to the Tilbury Docks.  We managed to find the customs building, but the fun was just beginning.  Although we had completed the customs declaration, a clerk handed us an additional short form, which the shipping company hadn't mentioned, that was unintelligible.  He suggested we call their help line for assistance, as all their staff was busy.  The form required some very specialized knowledge about customs codes and shipping numbers.  After getting on the pay phone and holding for 10 minutes, I was out all out of coins, and therefore disconnected.  As we tried to gather together even more coins, a nice lady in the customs office took pity on us.  She told us what code was needed and gave us the phone number of the storage depot, who provided the needed shipping number.  Then she had our form entered into the computer right away, without putting it into the queue, saving us about 5 hours of thumb twiddling.  A nice lady.  So an hour and a half later, we were driving north toward Scotland.

We stopped at the halfway point -- the city of (Old) York, a pretty, medieval town with brick buildings lining the narrow streets and the HUGE, ornate, York Minster Cathedral.  In addition to wandering around, we attended a free evening concert by the 26-piece American Flute Orchestra in the quire section of the church.  Quite interesting listening to the various types of flutes and especially to the contrabass flute, which is very unusual (only 15 in the world.)  It’s made of metal, is taller than I am, and is played standing up, with its pencil-like foot used to adjust the height of the mouthpiece to the flautist.

The next day we crossed the border into Scotland, where a bagpiper sounded a warm welcome at a roadside stop.  Then, just east of Edinburgh in the market town of Haddington, we started our search for summer housing.  People were very helpful, but a 10-week rental was just not available.  The only rental options seemed to be a 6 month lease or a weekly self-catered unit.  And no one had 10 weeks on a week-to-week basis without some bookings in between.  Our B&B hosts did introduce us to someone who had a cozy little "servants" cottage, inside a gated estate, situated behind the large main house, surrounded with lovely gardens.  Downstairs it had one room (living room/kitchen/dining room combined) and upstairs there were two very small bedrooms and a teeny-weeny bath.  It was cute but really TINY, and it wouldn't be available until July 1.

Another lead came from a friendly woman I met on the golf course.  She has a cottage on Loch Tay (90 miles north of Edinburgh.)  Though she’d never rented it before, she offered to rent it to us, though we’d have to wait a week while it was cleaned up.  So in the meantime we headed into Edinburgh.  There we found Ryden Lettings, who thought they could get us a 3-month lease (actually a 6-month lease with a "early departure" addendum), if we paid the "reletting fee" of $310, in addition to our fee of $150 for their services.  And that’s how we managed to find our flat for the summer.  We’re now ensconced in a large, fully furnished, 3-bedroom, 2-bath, modern apartment within walking distance of Edinburgh Castle.  And the place only cost one arm and half a leg!