This is just a short review for me but I suppose considering how often I do actually use public transport outside of school, its quite big.
Virgin Trains East Coast 91129 Berwick-upon-Tweed (departing 10:38) to Edinburgh Waverley (arriving 11:22)
We arrived at the station at about 10:25 - just as a CrossCountry service north pulled into the station. We purchased our tickets, which only came to around £38 (with a family railcard - don't know how much it would have been without one), and made our way up to the platform. The CrossCountry train was departing just as we were coming down to the platform so we had effectively 'missed' that train eventhough the plan was, from the start, to go for the 10:38 (announced as 10:39 by station staff) departure which we had no choice but to do. While waiting, I noticed the dispatcher walking up the platform and noticed that, despite wearing the Virgin Trains name badge, she was still wearing the East Coast purple uniform. It wasn't until then to which I realised that pretty much all staff was still wearing the old uniform - the new uniform obviously hasn't arrived yet. Anyway, the train arrived bang on time at 10:35 and departed at 10:38 and was a full VTEC liveried set. When I got on, I made sure I sat on the side of the train that was on the platform as that is the side where you can really capture the breathtaking views along the coast. It didn't take long for the train to build up speed and race along the stunning coast. I'd say it only took about 10-15 minutes to get into Scotland to which we got a nice welcome from the train guard. We stormed past Dunbar and after that, it was pretty much another 20 minutes before we arrived in Edinburgh. Quite surprised to get out of the station without having to go through a ticket barrier which I thought was very unusual for a major station but with us just walking up one of the ramps which lead onto Waverley Bridge directly opposite the Airlink 100 stand (which I should comment that the new buses look absolutely fantastic!)
The first thing we wanted to do is have something to eat so we went into the Princes Mall which is attatched to the station and found the Subway that we had used last year and just ate them in the big seating area in the middle of the 'food hall'. Finally, we discussed what we had planned to do before coming up and decided that rather than getting the 22 or any other service that goes to Ocean Terminal, we'd get the tour bus there instead as it is something we had never done before.
Lothian Buses (T/A Edinburgh Bus Tours) Dennis Trident Plaxton President 527 (V527 ESC) Waverley Bridge (departing 12:00) to Ocean Terminal (arriving 12:28)
We found the board which had all the prices up and the separate prices for us 3 added together actually equalled the price of a family ticket - £33. We boarded, got the ticket and went upstairs to which we found an elderly couple already there. We had, of course picked up our free earphones to plug into the bus to listen to the free audioguide which was absolutely fantastic and was quite good at how it kept to time with the bus. Didn't seem to jump ahead if we got stuck in traffic or at a set oft raffic lights. It could, of course, been controlled by GPS meaning that the audio couldn't move on until we were at a certain point. Managed to locate Edinburgh Bus Station too after god knows how many years i have spent looking. It didn't take long for us (well, me in particular) to realise how annoying the elderly couple actually was (they were american!). I'm sure they are lovely people but I do think the personality of all Americans are somewhat over dramatic and slightly annoying. Anyway, the bus reached The Botanic Gardens where few people alighted but quite a few boarded which created a bit of a problem at the stairs. People were trying to go down and alight while people who boarded were going up and everything just came to a complete standstill. Anyway, that soon cleared and we soon reached the next main stop, Ocean Terminal which is the home of the Royal Yacht Britannia, decommissioned in 1997. Like most people, we alighted at this stop.
We entered the building to find that it was a complete shopping centre and that the Royal Yacht Britannia is just a 'shop' which leads out to a boat itself. I'd recommend going to visit it to anybody - well worth it even if it isn't the sort of thing people are interested in. Took us between 1 hour and 1 hour 30 minutes (possibly longer) following the tour path and listening to the free audio guide which was very detailed and made the experience much better as opposed to stopping and reading boards of information. Speeds the process up a lot and saves 'traffic jams' being caused as you are waiting for others to finish reading what you want to read which spoils the whole thing. At least with the free audio guide, you can do the tour at your own pace. Once we finished the tour, we had a look around the shopping centre in more detail and I loved it - mainly because I wasn't expecting coming to see the Britannia and finding that it is next to a shopping centre. After we'd finished in there, we went back out to restart (and finish) the tour.
Lothian Buses (T/A Edinburgh Bus Tours) Dennis Trident Plaxton President 526 (V526 ESC) Ocean Terminal (departing 14:32) to Market Street (arriving 15:05)
We hadn't been waiting long when our bus came around the corner. I was hoping that it wasn't 527 again and it wasn't. As the American couple from earlier also boarded our bus, we decided this time to sit as far away from them as we possibly could and that is exactly what we did. Annoyingly the driver did pull away from the stop before I had a chance to plug my earphones back in to listen to the rest of the tour but i managed to get them in before the continuation of the tour started (when the woman said "if you've just boarded the bus, welcome back") and we continued through Leith before reentering the main city on the Royal Mile (Canongate),South Bridge and Bank Street before terminating on Market Street, around the corner from Waverley Bridge. Oversll, it was a fantastic tour and was well worth the £33 family ticket that we paid for the tour. The commentary was phenomenal and uncovered a lot about Edinburgh that I didn't know previously and saw parts of the city which I had never seen before.
We alighted the bus and headed towards the shops on Princes Street snd beyond. We crossed the road and walked along looking for any shops which looked to sell bags big enough for the small casket which holds my dogs ashes (can't go on a 'holiday' if you'd call being 2 hours away from home a holiday and leave her at home - especially as we are staying at the site where she last spent any major time with us) as we appear to have lost the other one we bought at Scarborough (or thrown away when we sorted our walk in cupboard out in the living room). No luck. We found some backs that were the right width but unfortunately, they were all too shallow. We carried on walking along when we realised that there is a street behind Princes Street with all sorts of shops. It was just a coincidence that we were about to walk up a street with the road closed because Lothian Gemini 807 (SN56 AFV) had been involved in an incident with a pedestrian. While the pedestrian was no longer at the scene (which is good - I didn't really want to walk up a street and see an injured person lying on the floor), it was quite clear as to what had happened and rather than some people who were literally glaring at the bus, I just glanced, saw that all that needed doing to the vehicle from a repair perspective was to fit a new windscreen (as it was cracked) but obviously it will need to be kept out of service for a few days for investigative purposes. Anyway, we carried on walking down this street, continuously looking for a bag and when we got to the end, turned left, back along the section of Princes Street which we had not covered, back up and along the second half of the street, again, the section that we had not covered. By this point, it had started to rain, not heavily but we could all start to feel raindrops falling on our heads (desperate not to start bursting into song there haha!
) Once we'd finished there, we walked down to St James' Shopping Centre on Leith Street (just off Princes Street and Waterloo Place) and had a look around there. While walking there, we saw 807 (SN56 AFV), which had been involved in the incident on George Street earlier in the day, being towed along Waterloo Place presumably back to its home depot and when exiting the shopping centre, I glanced over onto Leith Street and saw a Stanley Travel coach which later revealed itself to be TX63 STX which had been off the road for quite a while having repairs done to it following the incident it was involved in earlier in the year. Time was getting on so we decided to go and get the 18:05 train back down to Berwick but before that, as we had over 30 minutes before the train, we had one proper look around the Princes Mall next to the station where we had got our Subways at the start of the day. After that, we made our way to the Station to find which platform our train would be departing from.CrossCountry 221127 Edinburgh Waverley (departing 18:05) to Berwick-upon-Tweed (arriving 18:53)
Again, even going into the station through one of the main entrances, we still managed to get onto the main platforms without having to go through any ticket barriers which surprised me quite a lot considering that Waverley is one of the main stations on the UK rail network. Anyway, we found our train on the information boards and discovered that it would be departing from Platform 2. I looked at the board and discovered that it was a service to Birmingham New Street. I immediately knew from there that it was a CrossCountry train. Like the VTEC service coming up, it arrived on time. When I boarded, I walked past a toilet which had its door open. Wasn't the most pleasant smell. We quickly found a table seat which I was surprised at, especially as the service had come from Glasgow. The was somebody already sitting at the seat but she kindly let us sit down and just after we started moving after stopping at Dunbar, we all engaged in a very nice discussion. Especially as she was from Newcastle and she was on her way home from Glasgow after being their for work. She also mentioned how her husband worked for the Tyne and Wear Metro but I just let that one go
The train was much quieter on the inside compared to the journey on north on the 91 and we, again, sat on the side which captured the stunning views of the coastline north of Berwick. Although the toilets were quite smelly, the quality of the ride was much better than the 91 - probably down to being a younger train. Anyway, we said our goodbyes at Berwick as us 3 headed off back to the car which we had parked in the main car park as opposed to the railway station as it was free there (saving money, eh 
)Overall, we did loads more yesterday than we had ever done before in Edinburgh and we were all absolutely knackered. I could even start to feel my legs giving way but we managed fine. Really enjoyed the whole day, more than I thought I would. Thank you for reading! Forgot to type it up last night so did it quickly this morning and as I did it on my ipad, there may be a few spelling errors. Apologies if there are and let me know if you spot any for me to correct