Back to the routine and getting lost

Well, now that the holidays are over things are getting back to normal around here. Marius and I started up our sing and sign classes and our swimming classes this week. Although we woke up late today and missed our swimming.... Oh well. We had a play date on Monday so we drove out (in the snow!) to go to a kiddie play centre, where Marius and two other babies got to crawl around to their hearts' content while us mummies chatted about summer vacations, mothers and mothers-in-law, and car seats over a lovely cup of tea.
The car ride out to this play centre went very smoothly, but by the time I drove home, it was getting dark (it gets dark here at 3:30) and evening traffic was already starting to pick up. I took one wrong turn, and then managed to get myself completely lost. It's very odd how people here manage directions. In the US we are very much a street sign and block counting country. I guess that's because all of our streets were built after the invention of the car, so they're for the most part very straight and have perfect 90 degree intersections. The US also has street signs with the street name very prominently lit up in the middle of intersections (at least for the major streets). And the name of the street is what one keeps in mind when driving about.
But here, the street name isn't that important. This is because they change every 3 blocks, and you can drive into a neighbourhood that has all the same name street. For example, I got lost in the Stenhouse area, so I turned on Stenhouse Street, Stenhouse Drive, Stenhouse Lane, Stenhouse Garden Street, Stenhouse Terrace, Stenhouse Garden Terrace, Stenhouse Loan, Stenhouse Park, etc.... So, I kept thinking to myself.... "I thought I just was on Stenhouse! Why am I still on it after turning?" That's because ALL of the streets are named Stenhouse. Confusing huh? But the most particularly confusing thing about this area, was when I got to a round-a-bout with 4 streets. This is totally normal, but the thing that threw me off was that all four streets were named "Stenhouse Drive!" So, I kept on trying to turn around, only to find that I was always on Stenhouse Drive. I pulled a Chevy Chase and finally drove all the way around this thing trying to find a different named street to get my bearings. But I was totally shocked to find that they were all the same name and the same street/drive/place label!!! Nuts! I had to just take one of the streets, drive for a long time and then turn and stop to look at a map to figure out which direction I was driving. Eventually we got back home, but what should have been a 30 minute drive turned into an hour long drive.
Another driving difference here is that major intersections are not known as say "the intersection of Morningside Road and Lothian Road." Instead it'll have a junction name that's totally unrelated to either street name. So, you can be driving and wonder if that's Morningside Road up ahead, but there'll be a sign saying "St. John's Junction" instead! That's how they label the freeway (they're called motorways here) exits too. When I went to pick Faith and Ian up from the Airport last month, I knew the street that I needed to take to get on the motorway, and got on it just fine. Then we needed to come back home, and I couldn't figure out where I was because all of the exits had junction names. Who would have thought? Plus, it's not like the maps have these junction names on them, so maps are totally useless in that case. You basically have to get lucky, or overshoot your exit and turn around once you realize that you've gone too far, or get off early and have to navigate your way through lots of confusing surface streets. We ended up doing the later in this case, so they got to see some bits of Edinburgh that they otherwise would not have! Not that the bits we saw were at all interesting.
Oh well, I'm sure Brits complain about Americans with our super long streets. I guess being told that a place is at 1268 Main Street doesn't really help you if you're new to an area and looking at a map, as that could be anywhere along a 2 mile stretch of road in most cities. Whereas if the names changes 5 times, you have a pretty good idea of what stretch of road you need to head towards, assuming you've memorized all of the various names or are looking at a detailed map... But I'm starting to memorize a few of the more prominent streets here, so things are getting easier.