Edinburgh: The Edinburgh Castle

First, I apologize for not writing up all of our trip sooner. I think a part of me just doesn't want it to really be over. However, I better get everything written down before I forget!

Our train ride up to Edinburgh (That'd Ed-in-ber-ah, as the locals say) was beautiful and even though we checked into our hotel at ten in the evening, it was still very bright out. Our budget priced hotel room came with two tiny beds and we learned the hard way that a a last minute room for two doesn't always mean a room for, well, two. Mark's feet came within inches of the wall when he was in bed. It's funny now...

Luckily we were in good spirits and are flexible travelers. We woke up early on Sunday and hit the town. The first thing we did was taxi all the way up the royal mile to the entrance of the Edinburgh Castle. Wowee! We had to wait in a long line and spend lots of money to get it, but it was completely worth it. We spent over five hours in the castle and didn't see everything there was to see. If you are the type of person to read all the signs and listen to most of the audio guide, you definitely need an entire day just for the castle.

Don't let anyone fool you. I'm terrible at waiting in lines.

The view was worth it though. You could see the whole city! They had a lot of signage explaining what each building in the landscape was, as well as pictures depicting what the view looked like over the centuries. It was very well done.

Walking around felt kind of like an amusement park, except authentic and epic. As we were there on a summer weekend, the place was packed with tourists. We blended in.

We saw lots of guns and swords.

And took funny pictures in boxes.

There was a really old and rare pet cemetery, where apparently the really good and loyal hunting dogs got put to rest.

We saw huge canons, and there was also a 1:00 canon which goes off once a day. You can guess what time it goes off.

In the war museum we saw an old uniform and drum that was very cool and clearly some of the inspiration for many of the American marching band uniforms worn today.

In addition to the things not pictured, we saw the Scottish jewels, visited the Scottish War memorial, toured a prisoner of war dungeon, and contemplated the political and cultural relationship between Scotland and England.

After five hours, we were feeling the need to experience something different so we left and worked our way down the royal mile, which is the 1.25miles between the Edinburgh Castle and the Holyrood Palace. Throughout our time we managed to get some great shots of the castle though!