We are both in our 80s, so we arrived fatigued after 8 hours on the plane. The key lock box and the door worked exactly as Dawn had described in her emails. We turned on the space heater and lay down just for a moment under the soft duvet with luxurious embroidered sheets, on a comfortably firm mattress. Two hours later we awoke, surprised that it was already late afternoon! Time to turn left at the gate for the short walk to the little green park, then right a quarter mile to the shopping street. We turned up the hill that day, and found I.J. Mellis Cheesemonger with delicious cheeses and other groceries. Just across the street is Spanish Fine Food and Spanish wine. Here you can fill a bottle from his own Cask of Amontillado. Just down the hill from these stores are several greengrocers with everything else you need to eat. Rapidly, we had dinner and breakfasts in the rucksack and walked home. We appreciated the large walk-in closet when we unpacked our suitcases. The shelves and the clotheshanger bar with its many hangers absorbed everything. There is no chaos in this apartment. It's all neatly stored in the closet. (We didn't truly appreciate this closet until we entered our next apartment, brand new with a wee closet to hang clothes, and a couple of bins! ) Next morning we discovered how handy is the neighborhood. If we had turned a hundred feet downhill that first afternoon instead of uphill to shop, we would have come to the bus stop. You may be tempted to take the 36 bus to town because its stop is just around the corner from Danube Street. Don't. You would end up at the far west end, away from all the action. At the bus stop a few feet downhill on our shopping street the 29 bus awaits to bring you to the Walter Scott Monument around the corner from where you can pick up your Hop On-Hop Off bus, or the rail station at the same stop. The 42 bus stays a little farther west and stops at the art gallery, or at the very doors of the wonderful National Museum of Scotland. Take the 29 bus home and get off at Spanish Fine Foods to shop for dinner on the way down the hill before you turn left to walk along the greenery around the stream toward home on Danube Street. Everything works in this apartment. Kitchen appliances and cookware are plentiful and appear to be new. Even the knives were sharp. Pictures on the wall are interesting and fun, from a bull fight poster to Lombardy poplars - on a French canal? Dawn has spent money and used her imagination to furnish this place beautifully for visitors like us. Soon we stopped calling it Dawn's place, or the apartment and simply called it "home." We wished our house in New York could function as smoothly as this little apartment. You...