Holiday

I get 5 weeks of holiday (that's paid vacation time) every year and come June I was wanting to use a couple days of it. So, Andy and I took the train the morning of June 8th down to Edinburgh to be tourists for a day. We started out with a cup of coffee at the Starbucks on Princes Street which is the main street in Edinburgh. We love that store because it's up a level from the street and has an amazing view of the castle. After we were perked up a little bit we walked on up to the castle and paid to get in. Actually, we decided to become members of Historic Scotland. What we do is pay an annual fee and then we can get into any of the Historic Scotland castles for free as many times as we want. Basically, once we went to three castles it had already paid for itself so it was worth it for us since we plan on seeing as many castles as we can. So, once we were members then we entered into Edinburgh castle and took a guided tour. That is a big castle and it's so beautiful. Of course, we haven't seen a castle yet that we thought was ugly. Even so, it is a beautiful place. After our time at the castle we walked down the Royal Mile then over to a big park where we sat for a bit before heading to find somewhere for lunch. After lunch we wandered over to Greyfriar's Bobby's churchyard to see the grave of Greyfriar's Bobby. After that is when we began to feel real touristy because we paid for a "hop on hop off" pass for a sightseeing guided tour bus. It was great and we learned a lot about the city that we'll gladly share with anyone who comes over to visit us (hint hint). We took the train back to Aberdeen that night.

I had a few days off after that so we just hung around town until the 12th of June when we borrowed a car and drove up into the Highlands and to Inverness. On the way up we stopped in Huntly to see the castle there and in Elgin to see the Elgin Cathedral (those are both part of Historic Scotland). Elgin Cathedral is the picture below. They were very beautiful (I think you'll find that I use beautiful to describe a lot of things over here...until I think of another word that is equally descriptive then it'll just have to do) :) If you look close at the picture above (that's Huntly castle) you'll see me standing and waving in the doorway. That should give you a better idea of how big it is. When we got up north we drove straight to Urquhart Castle (both pictures at the bottom left and right are of Urquhart Castle) which is right on Loch Ness. We tried to spot Nessie from the top of the castle but had no such luck. The monster is still out there apparently. We loved Urquhart Castle. It is, you guessed it, beautiful! After our day in Inverness we found a pub to eat dinner in and watch the USA v. Czech Republic World Cup match. USA was losing so terribly that we ended up leaving early to start driving back to Aberdeen. Oh well, it was a fun experience anyway!