Edinburgh Castle

Edinburgh Castle, as you can tell from these pictures, sits high above the city, and this position leads to some of the most amazing views! But first, the entrance family selfie! (You can see us all wearing our Voxbox earphones, listening for our guide to start her spiel.)

Our local guide once again gave some fascinating facts, all of which I've forgotten by now because I've waited too damn long to write these posts now (getting old sucks, y'all). I'm going to write what I remember and then beg the rest of my family for their memories, and come back and add them later! :) 

There were "levels" to the castle. The first level had this great lookout: 

 And the view the cannon sees, including The Goth Church off to the right:

                  

The guide said, "Oh just wait, it gets better!"

She was right:

All the water you can see here is the  "Firth of Forth", which is a junction of several rivers, the biggest one of which is the River Forth. The bit of land off to the left is named Fife. And so this view is the Scottish tongue twister in real life, showing you the Firth of Forth to Fife. (*groan*)

On this level was Curt's favorite part, the biggest damn cannon we've ever seen - Mons Meg herself:

Human for scale

Between these two levels is a small graveyard for all the family dogs who ever lived here. I missed Cleo, whom we'd left at home in very poor health, seeing this.

Right behind us:

Up one more steep hill to the top level, and we were in a courtyard surrounded by a few buildings, one of which contained the room where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to King James VI. 

It was a teeny, tiny little room. I could barely imagine the crowd surrounding her to witness the birth, and the ladies helping her. 

We poked around the castle for a while longer, stopping for a quick snack before resuming our tour of Edinburgh proper.

More pictures: https://link.shutterfly.com/OVKjCkV60rb