City Tour, Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace

 Birgit says that unless we want to extend our stay in Edinburgh and skip the Highlands altogether we need to be up, fed, packed, and on the bus by 8:30 tomorrow morning so I’m not going to wait until tomorrow to post about today.t

 We started today with a bus tour of the city. Barbara told us a lot about the history, architecture, and city planning of Edinburgh. More than I can summarize or remember now, so if you want to know more about that, start here.

Then we walked up to Edinburgh Castle. We were joined by all the other tour groups and independent tourists who are in Edinburgh today. It was very sociable. Fortunately we have some cool technology that meant Barbara didn’t have to shout at the top of her lungs to be heard over the crowd noise as we all huddled around her. Instead she gave us all headsets and she had a microphone; she could then just use her normal speaking voice and we could all here her even from 50 or 100 feet away (not sure what the range is). We saw plenty of other groups with screaming guides so I’m happy we get to do it this way.


A few pictures from the castle: 





The cemetery in one of the pictures above is not for people, but for the dogs of soldiers stationed at the castle!

This is a good time to mention something that’s probably obvious by now: we’re much more interested in just experiencing the trip than in taking the perfect photos for either ourselves or our studio audience, so feel free to change the channel if our pictures don’t suit your fancy.

After the castle we bussed to Holyrood Palace which was originally just an abbey (mostly destroyed during the reformation). I am a sucker for ruined abbeys.



We got to see some of the gardens as well.in this picture Arthur’s seat is in the background.


And some pictures from the palace grounds. (Not photos were allowed of the inside). 




I’m much too exhausted to write more or even attempt to be funny so I’m going to just stop and try not to starve to death before dinner. Tomorrow (Sunday) we leave the big city and head up to the Highlands which is why we’re all really here.




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