Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

The Hub’s passport was full, each page suffering travel stampage overload. So I dropped him at the American Consulate in Edinburgh. “Wait,” said the nice lady at the door. “He needs a special delivery envelope to send off the passport.”

Armed with detailed directions—”Straight off down Regent Road, ten minutes walk, easy-peasy.”—the dog and I set off.

And it would have been easy, not to mention peasy, if Scotland hadn’t decided to hold Spring that day. We were distracted by a billion daffodils.

And by the “New” Parliament House (which actually never was, and which locals still call the Old Royal High School)

Then there was the Duke of Wellington on his famous horse Copenhagen outside Register House.

Oooh and Old Calton Cemetery, with its graves of famous dead A-listers, giant obelisk memorial to early martyrs for universal suffrage and…

Yes, that’s Abe Lincoln and a freed slave on the…