Quite honestly I expected Dad would figure out a way to serve me breakfast in bed. That didn't exactly happen but this was a close second.
Tomorrow I am going to skip the beans and the sausage and do ham eggs and cereal.
We bought an all day bus pass and headed off to the Edinburgh Castlle
Quite honestly the castle in Stirling is so much more interesting than the Edinburgh one that I hardly took any pictures - I may be getting castle numb. One of the photos above...shows some blue bleachers on the left. Those are for the Military Tattoos that are held every evening in August during the Edinbrgh Festival. One has to order tickets far in advance.
There was a room with the Scottish crown jewels - I didn't even know Scottish ones existed. Sorry, no photos allowed, but they look just like the English ones in the Tower of London. There was a military museum and a wall mural depicting the linage of all the kings of Scotland and other stuff
For "my" Malcolm I of Brunner Manor.
At the top of the castle there is a big canon (now its a modern day artillery gun, not an ancient canon) that our guide had told us is fired every day at 1 pm to annouce that it is indeed 1 pm. It's been going on for centuries. Dad and I had totally forgotten about it. Then about 1:00ish, Dad and I noted that the whole castle courtyard was full of people silently staring at something near the castle wall. Had someone had a heart attack? Were William and Catherine and family visiting? "KER-BAM" Oh, right, it's 1:00!
We went to look at the gun and at the view over the city wall.
Remember the park bench we sat on for the fireworks show. Here it is viewed through a gun portal in the wall. Look for the red SUV on the road. The bench is just above the car.
We were done with the castle It was time for birthday lunch!
Dad got sausage and chips, and for me - Haggis and Chips
It was really tasty. Haggis has a bad maketing team. It should be called "Spicey Lamb Meatball Loaf in Sausage Form". I mean, any form of food that starts with "hag..." is doomed. I missed my birthday cake from the waiters because we had to get to a tour before 2:15. Then found out that the tour had been at 1:00 - out dated info from an old Rick Steves book - dang.
So, instead, we went to the
and had (piece of) bithday cake and hot chocolate in the cutsie cafe. We felt very chic. Can you be chic eating a brownie?
The museum is massive! We're going back tomorrow and try to get out of the basement and into the upper floors.
We walked along the Royal Mile. Yes, the buildings are old and look cool, but the ones at road level are either pubs, restarants, chip take aways, clothing stores, souvenier shops, or "buy your kilt outfit here" stores. There are also some specialty stores. This photo was from a wallpaper and upsholtery shop Rabbits!
And these two from a witchcraft store - rabbits and moons.....beware.
Our last stop was walking arount St Giles Cathedral - 14-15th century. Four massive main pillars from 1120. Organ from 1992. The pulpit of this cathedral is from where John Knox preached his new doctrinal ideas and Scotland switched from the Church of England (which had been the Catholic Church) to the The Church of Scotland ( which is the same as the Prebyterian Church)
This photo is for Dolores
Dad got me a rabbit calendar for my BD gift. This was a good day!
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