Edinburgh was definitely a highlight and trip full of wonderful highlights. It was another gorgeous day (the weather was exceptionally good throughout the whole trip, if not a bit nippy). Took the bus to the city centre and began wandering down Princes Street, eventually making our way to the Royal Mile and the castle. I loved hearing the pipes everywhere we went, although we did hear some pretty poor play as well from a guy on the street corner. The castle was amazing and we ended up spending over four hours exploring the castle alone on Sunday. There was so much to see and the guided tour we took was really good and informative. There was the prisons, the memorial chapel, the Scottish crown jewels, Mons Meg, and to top it all off the National War Museum of Scotland which was fantastic! There were lots of exhibits about how bagpipes have been used in war throughout the centuries and Clyde enjoyed all of the weapons. We probably could have spent even more time than we did, but it was off to see other things. We needed to find a hotel to stay in for the next two nights, so we went to the TI centre and found one close to the Royal Mile. We really wanted to get rid of our packs, we knew what it was like to literally carry them all day in Dublin and knew that we didn’t want that to happen again. So after getting rid of the packs we had supper at a nice little Italian place called Bella Italia that was not far from the hotel. We both had wonderful pasta and even some wine! :) I love being legal in Europe :) We went up to a store to see if we could book a bus tour up to Inverness and the Highlands, but they were all sold out, so we decided that we would just go to the train station and see if we could just take a train up there. The next morning we got up and had breakfast at a place called Chocolate Soup. It was sooooo yummy! We had bagels and porridge (this is what they call oatmeal…so cute). At the train station we discovered it would take four hours on the train to get to Inverness and four hours back, so we looked at some other options. Stirling was only 40 minutes by train and it has a castle (always a hit with Clyde :)) so we got tickets, found the train and we were off. The train ride was another beautiful one- Scotland is absolutely gorgeous, especially in such beautiful weather.
Stirling was a neat little university town situated at the foothills of the Highlands. We walked around the main shopping area and found the TI centre for a map and made our way to Stirling castle. The castle, like in Edinburgh sets up above the town and is beautiful. It actually is a lot like Edinburgh castle in many ways. We did another guided tour and our tour guide could not have been better. Before the tour started I saw this guy who looked like he worked there and I turned to Clyde and said, “If that guys is our tour guide I’m going to be so happy.” And it turned out that he was! He was wearing trews and a glengerry (reference the picture posted) and had the best Scottish accent ever! He was so passionate about the castle and you could tell that he loved his job. The only bone I have to pick with him is that he stabbed Clyde 27 times, chopped his head off with a poll ax and threw him out a window several stories up. What a meany. :) He was actually talking about a man who was killed in that manner by a king and used Clyde to demonstrate. We had a blast with this guide and really enjoyed the castle. For lunch we got big bowls of really, really good soup at a place called Creama, then since we were still hungry got Subways. It took us three times, but we finally got onto a bus that would take us to the Wallace monument…well, you see the bus didn’t go directly there and when we got close the bus driver stopped and yelled at us from the front to get off if we wanted to go the monument. We walked off that bus with ever pair of eyes from the full bus on us. To top it off we walked up to the monument and found out that it had closed an hour ago. Oh well, it still makes for a funny and memorable sorry.
Caught a train back to Edinburgh and went on our long awaited search for Belhaven, a really good Scottish beer. We found it at Deacon Brodie’s tavern on the Royal Mile. We both got pints and it was good, but Clyde had to help me finish mine. Got some pizza at Pizza Express and called it a night. Tuesday was the last day of our trip, since we had to fly back to England that evening. There is a very large hill/mountain thing in the city of Edinburgh, almost like a really big park for hiking and such called Arthur’s seat. We decided we would take part of the day to climb to the top. We fueled up at Chocolate Soup again for breakfast before walking to the base of the big hill thing. We ended up by the Queen’s Scottish palace and the Scottish Parliament building. Note about the parliament building, the architect must have been on crack when he designed it, it’s crazy! Cool, but crazy! The hike started with a really, really steep climb and by the time it leveled out we were complaining about how out of shape we were. Then we discovered that we had gone up the wrong way and there was still the whole of the Arthur’s seat to climb in order to reach the top. Instead of killing ourselves we just climbed around the area we were and sat at the top for a while to take in the breathtaking view. We hiked back down into the city and wandered around some shops looking for Ghille brogues to add to our pipe band uniforms, but no luck. I was able to get a kilt outfit for the bear I’m going to make at Build-a-Bear in Canterbury, it’s super cute. After eating subway..again (twas yummy though) we hopped on the bus back to the airport. We both could have stayed in Scotland a lot longer, but we have to save some things for next time…
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