Edinburgh and St. Andrews

La Première Lounge at Paris CDG

We were met at the plane door by Céline, our wonderful La Première personal assistant for the day who escorted down the jetbridge stairs to our private Mercedes van for the drive to the La Première Lounge.

Thrilled to be back home in the best First Class Lounge in the world and the only one with an Alain Ducasse restaurant.

Pics from an earlier visit.

Time for dinner, chez Alain Ducasse.

Fabulous foie gras with warm brioche starter.

And the iconic Coquillettes aux truffe/noir

And my favourite dessert.  Rum Baba ou Le Baba au Rhum.

Yay, Céline worked her magic and I have a new La Première luggage tag.

Bien sur, a glass of Paradis to finish the meal.

And my Instagram video of the wonderful La Première Lounge in Paris

Waldorf Astoria Edinburgh - The Caledonian

We learned that Edinburgh Festival means that August is the busiest hotel month of the year.  Not a lot of good reasonably priced choices.  I used Amex FHR for a decent-ish rate with the usual FHR bennies including breakfast and a late check-out.   

Very nice old world hotel albeit with old world quirks.

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Although a challenged front desk staff, to say the least.  The person we got made a big deal about explaining the FHR benefits, especially the complimentary upgrades.  LOL since the hotel was sold out.  And the boys were assigned a room that was already occupied... as in a couple in bed when they opened the door.  Whoa!

My first room that was about a block away down the entire length of the hotel.  Top floor but with just two tiny windows.

Nice view though.

I trekked downstairs and switched rooms, albeit not an upgrade, just a lower level room but at with normal windows.

Still a nice view but much closer to the elevator and stairs.

After we finally settled in, we headed out for a drink or two.  Just around the corner, was the lively Rat Pack Piano Bar.

Next, we headed down Princes Street to the #3 TIme-Out rated bar in Edinburgh.  It was a quite a hike and we discovered that there was a garbage workers strike and lots of piled up trash.

A queue to get into McDonald's... at 1am.  LOL

Fifteen minutes later, we're here.  Looked a lot closer on my phone.  LOL.

Nice bar and atmosphere... and some great drinks.

More trash pics on the way back to the hotel.

Next morning, breakfast...

OMG, made the mistake of being adventurous and ordering the Traditional Scottish Breakfast including haggis and black pudding.  Yikes, there's a reason there aren't a lot of Scottish restaurants... outside of Scotland.  LOL.

Instagram videos of Edinburgh...

Off to St Andrews and the Old Course

We departed Edinburgh around 3:45pm for the 75 minute drive to St. Andrews using an excellent St. Andrews based taxi/shuttle service that was recommended to us. Lovely scenery along the way with the best weather of the trip - sunny and 20C/68F. Our driver Tim gave us a brief tour of charming St. Andrews before heading over to our hotel Rusacks and the breathtaking and historical Old Course where The Open was played just 4 weeks earlier.

Rusacks Hotel St. Andrews is the place you'll want to stay in St. Andrews. Built in 1887 and recently remodeled, Rusacks occupies the best golf location in St. Andrews… overlooking the 18th green and fairways as well as the 1st tee and fairway and famous Swilken Bridge. Lovely hotel, excellent service and a great meal at rooftop 18 restaurant.

Lovely golf theme room...

... with a view.

After we checked in to Rusacks, we headed across the street to soak up the atmosphere.   The Old Course is open to the public to walk and enjoy every Sunday, as there is no golf that day. What a treat to walk part of the course.

The requisite photo op at famous Swilken Bridge. 

And we can say that we played the Old Course as we played the fun Himalayas putting course, which gives you a feel for the links course greens themselves.

Rusacks' rooftop restaurant 18 was a real treat. Amazing views of the Old Course from the outdoor terrace where we enjoyed a drink before dinner. Dinner was excellent with great food and service.

And a little snooker to cap the evening.

Breakfast the next morning.  No more Traditioinal Scottish Breakfast for me.

And some Instagram videos...

Air France Business Edinburgh to Paris

What is miserable way to start an otherwise wonderful day... once I got to Paris.

The good news is that I’m fly Air France La Première. The bad news is that I’m starting in EDI which is one butt-ugly and chaotic airport. I’ve seen better third world airports. After a 15 minute walk from the Doubletree, I arrived at a dreadful terminal. 

Inside the terminal, an ugly 3rd world mess.  Love the ceiling to floor electical connections.  Why would we want to install in-floor outlets?  LOL.

Air France’s contract agents are few and far between here, so Sky Priority check-in took 20 minutes as there was only one competent agent and he had to assist the only other agent who had a queue of nearly 100 people to deal with. Despite email assurance from La Première/LHR to the contrary, there was no La Première assistant to escort me through worst-in-the-world-UK security and to the Gate 16 Aspire Lounge (a mile away from our gate LOL)

FastTRACK security.  LOL.  Fast and UK security are oxymorons.

Someone seriously thought that this was a good idea?  LOL.

Surprise, surprise... it's broken today.  

But of course... miles of duty free just to get to the terminal.

Looks like the roof leaks... not surprising here.

This place was packed at 4:30am, and with a 30 minute wait.

The Gate 16 Aspire Lounge had a queue so long... 

... that I just used my Amex card to access the adjacent and rather pleasant Priority Plus Lounge. 

A G&T at 5am, because why not?

After a 15 minute trek from the lounge thru one of the ugliest airports in Europe and I’m at one of the ugliest gates in Europe, circa 1950 I’d guess. From Gate 4, the door to the plane was a good 1/2 mile. 

We got halfway only to find a locked pre jet bridge door. We waited 10 minutes for someone to open the door. And no Mr. Contract agent, I’m not going to walk back and tell the gate agent to come here. LOL. 

On board, the captain apologized for the “problems here causing a delay”.  LOL.  These “problems here” caused us to depart EDI more than 30 minutes late. And of course arrive in Paris 30 minutes late giving me a 35 minute connection to my LAX flight.​

On board, good service but WFT is that breakfast??

Instagram videos of this morning...