Edinburgh

Day 8 - May 18

Free day today in Edinburgh. Kinda rainy for most of the day but ended pretty nice. Explored Edinburgh Castle, shopped the Royal Mile, saw Holyrood Palace through the closed gates (where the queen stays when she visits Edinburgh), saw Arthur's seat from a distance (best view of Edinburgh from what I hear) and planned to do a ghost tour that night. Apparently Edinburgh is a very haunted city, or at least that's what they tell the tourists to get us to pay to be scared out of our wits. The meeting point was the Starbucks, just not the Starbucks we went to. So, we made our own tour - by the Gothic Rocket (the Sir Walter Scott Spire), through a cemetery tucked away off the street, up to another great hilltop view of the city to Calton Hill with its partial replica of the Parthenon, and down through the city streets back to the Royal Mile for a late night coffee at the Starbucks where we were supposed to meet the ghost tour. Oh well, I heard it was kinda hokey anyway. My tour was great and it was also free! Loved the atmosphere in Edinburgh - active but not crazy-busy, an occasional freak but not like Dublin, and traffic not nearly as hectic. Loads of beautiful old buildings and lots of history. We could easily walk just about anywhere we wanted to go, no need for a dirty smelly subway. Would love to go back and explore some more. And I bought myself a way-cool bonnie hat and scarf. Don't laugh, I was feeling very Scottish! I was dying to do my best Sean Connery accent, but didn't want to offend the locals. They couldn't understand my Southern accent, so I'm sure they wouldn't get my Southern Sean either. I loved to hear them talk though. I'm really loving Scotland. Really need to go back.