Our wee trip to Edinburgh

We took a trip to Edinburgh over Easter weekend since we had 4 days off here. We took the train up on Friday night and came back Monday afternoon. Before we left, everyone kept telling us "it's a lovely city" and now we know why...there's no better way to describe it! The city is not very big at all and our hotel was very central. So the first day we were there we just walked and explored! We wandered around the Royal Mile- which is the main street in the Old Town that leads up to the castle. Lots of shops, cafes, pubs - we sampled some homemade fudge, bought some Scotch (of course!) and Bobby browsed old maps of Scotland in an antique map store we found. Here's a picture of Edinburgh Castle - we walked down the gardens alongside the hill. The castle looks amazing - it's build right into the rock (which I guess was formed by a dormant volcano).

Then we headed up to Princes Street, which is the main shopping street in the New part of the city. We walked up to Carlton Hill at the opposite end of the city and went to the top of a monument called Nelson's tower at the top of the hill. Here's a view from the top of the hill - and you can see an area called "Arthur's seat" in the background which is the main peak of the group of hills in Holyrood Park.

Now don't ask me why I agreed to it, but we then climbed up to the top of Arthur's seat!!! It was a long hike, but we made it all 250 meters (about 825 feet) to the top! Here's a pic of us at the highest peak and also the last little bit of the climb (I'm not joking!).

That night we did a mini pub crawl up the Royal Mile. We met some interesting characters - a group of golfer's on a stag party that were all dressed up in their golf gear, had little plastic golf clubs and were keeping "score" for every drink - and Pete, a 68 year who had flown for the Royal Air Force and loved being at the mic at karaoke night!

Sunday we went on a tour of the castle (freezing and windy!) and then had a tour of Mary King's Close (the pic below). So here's a little background - about 400 years ago, Edinburgh's streets were these very, very narrow alleyways called "closes" and people lived in tall buildings along the side. These closes have been since covered over with the modern buildings, so they are now underground. It's basically like an underground city - it's the spookiest thing! Very cool to tour around down there though...

The last night we were there, we went out to dinner and tried a very traditional Scottish meal called Haggis. It's made from sheep's heart, liver, lungs, onion, oatmeal, spices and boiled in the animal's stomach for a few hours. It sounds SO nasty, but a lot of people told us we had to try it, so we did. And it actually was good (I wouldn't eat it all the time though!). The trip ended Monday morning with a beautiful train ride back to London on the East Coast of Scotland/England. Another easy and relaxing trip... can't wait for the next!