Exploring Edinburgh

 Our morning started off with breakfast at the hotel around 8:30am and an "appointment" with the Travel Director to pay off the amount owed for all the optional activities we'd participated in. Once that business was handled, we had the morning free to ourselves.

The four of us first took a walk around the neighbourhood near our hotel. We ended up finding the stairs to the top of the hill, bringing us out to the gates of Edinburgh Castle. These pictures absolutely do not tell the story of how steep these stairs are...we were breathless half way up!

Almost to the top, we turned around to get this stunning view, which almost gives some perspective to how far we'd climbed:

We knew that we were scheduled for a castle tour later in the afternoon, so we didn't bother going near it, and instead (after my little fan-girl moment of being on THE Royal Mile!) we wandered towards the "goth church" that S had noticed on the way up.

This building was stunning, and surprisingly was now a cafe! I'll come back and update this post with the name and story behind it because I can't remember all that info now, but I know S will. She was fascinated with the Highland Tollbooth Kirk, aka: The Goth Church (our nickname) and studied up on it.

We happened to wander by St. Gile's Cathedral which was open for tours. With a small donation, we girls walked through while Curt took a pause to rest his feet (and make friends with some locals) outside. 

I have dozens of pictures of this place, too, but here are a couple of highlights:

The woodwork on this bench is stunning

At this point we had almost made it all the way back to the hotel. The younger half of the party were exhausted and grumpy, and made the decision to go chill out for a while so they could make it through the rest of the day. (They are young, but wise).  Curt and I wandered a little bit more, in the opposite direction from where we'd gone in the morning. We happened upon a very photographic restaurant

 (where we actually ate dinner the next night) and a cat cafe just around the corner from our hotel. 

That's Edinburg Castle to the left of the edge of the restaurant

Kitties in the window! I missed Merida after seeing this

From there, we wandered accidentally upon a graveyard that Darren had talked about when we came into the city the previous night. This graveyard is special because of the story of the Greyfriar's Bobby, a loyal pupper who guarded the grave of his owner for 14 years before dying. The local church honored this relationship by giving the dog his own grave. 

We found out that this was also a Geocache so I logged that while we were there. ;) 

Some random strangers admiring the statue of Greyfriar's Bobby 

We got caught in a little Scottish rain shower while exploring the graveyard, and were able to grab shelter under some trees while it passed. 

Another Bus Tour Around the City

We met the tour group back at the hotel for another "drive around the city on the bus" tour. I think there was some history being taught, but I was just so fascinated by the views, I barely paid attention. We drove past a few monuments like the Robert Burns memorial:

And the Walter Scott Monument which I really wanted to see much closer but never got the chance to:

We then drove to the "far end" (opposite of Edinburgh Castle) of the Royal Mile to the castle of Holyrood House, the Queen of England's "summer home". The plan was to go for a tour of the grounds, except the Queen surprised the tour guides by having arrived that very morning to take up residence. Therefore, the palace was closed to visitors. We drove by 3 times to get photos, and even caught a glimpse of Camilla walking between buildings! But sadly, no tour. :(

We also saw Arthur's Seat, another place I would love to go explore on foot, someday!

After the local specialist felt we'd pushed our luck enough and were bordering on stalking, we then proceeded up the Royal Mile to finish the ride at the gates of Edinburgh Castle. We met Darren there for our tickets to enter, and then the local specialist gave us a private tour of this castle, too. That is going to be a separate post, though, because - wow - there was a lot to see and learn there!