Day 3 - Edinburgh

Steps: 9856

Up bright and early today. We had a full day in front of us. Starting with what I thought was going to be a walking tour of Edinburgh from our hotel. Turns out, it was a bus tour. Oddly I prefer the walking tour because you see so much more...but on the bus means I don't tire out as much.

We had a special guide for the tour of Edinburgh, Richard was his name. Kilt and all. He seemed quite knowledgeable, which I guess you have to if you're going to be a tour guide in such a historic place.

Our tour started at Edinburgh Castle.  Edinburgh Castle sits on this massive hill, which, turns out, is a volcano. Or a volcano is around it, I can't remember. The castle is massive and has a ton of buildings and out buildings. The hike up, and I mean hike up, was a bit daunting, but we got our steps in and exercised...which I think pointed out we could have anything we wanted for lunch.

The castle is pretty cool though. Perfect position high on a mountain. The castle has been "in business" as I like to call it, since the 12th century. Every time! Every single time, I'm visiting something that's hundreds of years old I like to think about what life was like for those people back then. Fascinating to me to think how people lived.

The Castle has several buildings in it now...AND the crown jewels are there. We tramped through a maze of historical things to see them...only to find out I couldn't photograph them. Still, they're pretty neat looking, well, ok, they were stunning. To read the history about them, honestly, had me a bit mesmerized.

After the castle, we drove down to Holyrood Palace. The Queen still stays there from mid June through mid July. We saw 30 of the rooms...all are still considered "working" rooms, meaning if there's a state dinner they'd use the dining room we saw.  Tons of rules the staff have to follow in the palace too. The art work throughout was amazing. Hundreds of paintings of the misc royal family members. It was pretty interesting. I'm finding I'm learning much more about the royal family, and it's quite interesting for a foreigner like me.

Back at the hotel, we dropped our stuff, visited the little girls room, and head out to explore. First order of business was lunch! We found a little pub called Whiski's for some food. Delicious food and more importantly delicious beer.

After we just walked and walked. Snapping photos of cool buildings and what not.

Later that afternoon we took an excursion to Rosslyn Chapel. You may remember this chapel from the DaVinci Code. This chapel is amazing. Small, as chapels go. But inside is so incredible ornate and so beautiful. No photos were allowed inside, which really bugged me, but I get it. And for once I didn't break the rules.

I forgot to mention last night we did this fantastic Spirit of Scotland dinner theater thing. I knew it would be very cheesy and very touristy, but we wanted to do it anyhow. They did the "Haggis Ceremony" and that was followed by 2 hours of singing and dancing. Now, I didn't really expect that much from this, having done these in the past. But man oh man was this amazing. The bagpiper is some world famous guy (who's name I forgot), the food was off the charts good, and the singing. Man the singing was fantastic. The one main female singer was sensational. She sang Amazing Grace, and when she announced the song, Janet and I just looked at each other as if to say, "OH god. Keep it together." I'm proud to say, I did...Up Until the DAMN Bagpipes. Sheesh.

Tomorrow we're off to Abbotsford and Melrose Abbey.