12 Days, 4 Countries, 2 Women, 1 Car (and 1 drivers licence) - Mum Diaries #4

Log Four, May 15: You’re not going to believe the day we have had! But first, I have to rewind just a little, to when Mum and I returned back to our hotel after a lovely evening along Rose Street and Prince Street Gardens. Remember when I said that parking was an ‘every man for themselves’ kind of a situation? Well, to our amazement there was one park free right at the top of our street – only a few meters away from our hotel door. “How lucky!” we thought, we didn’t have to spend any time at all looking for a park. We had a wonderful day, the hire car had survived another trip and we were off to bed – after dragging Mum back up Everest (refer to previous post).

Now fast forward to this morning. We were up around 7am, refreshed and ready to see the sights that Edinburgh had to offer. We checked-out of our hotel, said goodbye to the receptionist and headed out the door. Because I was so excited I was walking ahead of Mum towards the hire car that was waiting for us in our ‘lucky-last’ park…

...The hire car wasn’t there… [could you repeat that?]

It. WAS NOT. There.

You could imagine my panic. I started to look for broken glass on the ground, thinking it had been jacked - Mum hadn’t even gotten to me yet to see that the car was gone – and as I looked at the ground, I see faint pink painted lines that outlined a parking spot then when I look up towards Mum I see the answer. The pink permit parking sign that states “no parking 6pm-6am except with permit # blah blah blah”… Our hire car had been towed away during the night because a resident returned home to find that their parking space had been taken - don’t ask how we didn't see the sign in the first place.

An amazing way to start our day – but it didn’t stop there.

After retrieving the hire car and paying the extortionate fine, we laughed it off and headed to The Royal Mile in search for breakky and a (well needed) coffee.

We had parked – and paid – in a parking lot not far from The Royal Mile, easy enough for Mum and I to walk to nearby shops and to Edinburgh Castle.

We spent a few hours here. When we made it back to the car guess what we found… a parking fine! (Yay!)
Very stupid mistake on my behalf, after I had paid for the parking and got the ticket I sat the ticket UPSIDE DOWN on the dash (smacks forehead with palm of hand). That was a little harder to laugh off.

After our exciting morning and few hours of shopping and touristing (yes, that is not a word), we were ready to drive back to Sheffield. Before leaving we stopped at a music store to buy a gift for my little brother, Jimmy. The parking lot was right outside the store, no parking metre, no sign nearby saying that we couldn’t be there… Oh, you guessed right! Parking fine number 3!! As it turns out, there was a sign at the end of the parking lot that showed the parking lot was for (bloody) residents only. We were in the music store for maybe 15 minutes and as we walk out we see the parking officer writing up a ticket for us. I ran over to beg him not to give us another ticket, played the “sympathetic tourist” card and explained what we had already been through. But it was too late. He had already completed the job on his hand-held ticket computer. The ticket officer did sympathise with us because he knew the signage wasn’t great – obviously a popular spot for handing out fines – and he said he would phone the office to help us appeal the ticket (which you’ll be pleased to know, didn’t work. We still had to pay).

Would you like to know how much we paid for the fines that day? The total cost for 2 parking fines and 1 tow away was 460 pounds. VERY expensive lessons learned!

Tomorrow we’re off to France!

p.s I’m afraid I couldn’t make Mum eat haggis.