Edinburgh

Edinburgh was one of the highlights of our visit with Lawton and Debbie. We were lamenting the fact that we were missing our annual dive trip but I think we all agreed, Edinburgh is in the top 5 list of cities to visit. The trip started out like an MTV reality series. 4 adults and 5 kids in a foreign country. A 4.5 hour train ride to a medieval city where Scotch is the drink of choice. Let's see how they get along after 4 days. You get the picture.

The castle is one of the coolest we have visited and we have

punched the clock at a number of castles. The 1.5 hour wait to enter was lower on the highlight list but once inside, it rocked (no pun intended). This shot is from the bottom of the hill, just down from the Grassmarket. Here we are at Maggie Dickson's pub in the Grassmarket. This was our favorite stop. The Grassmarket was where all the hangings took place and it was a nice threat when the kids didn't behave.

Maggie Dickson was hung but when they put her body on a cart to take her for burial, the cobblestone streets caused a CPR effect and she was resuscitated.

Since she had already been punished by hanging to the death, she was free to go. Our Maggie liked this most of all.

We spent an afternoon on the Britannia, the royal yacht of Queen Elizabeth. Very cool tour. We also dove into the Scotch Whiskey experience in hopes of learning about how it is made and perhaps finding something we liked.

Despite all that we learned and tried, we came to the conclusion we are not

Scotch people. Cool picture with the collection though. Our best spots were dining outside on the High Street. Once the kids chowed down their food, they were off to watch the street performers. That let the grown-ups almost have some quality time. The Scottish Clans were in town so we got to watch the clans parade with more tartan and bagpipes than you have ever seen. Holyrood House was closed as Prince Charles was in town and there

were games going on. The queue was quite long and we skipped this one but you can see the house behind the kids.

We had other random adventures like a creepy tour of the old underground city on a street known as Mary King's Close. We nipped into the National Museum and spent a good bit of time on the Royal Mile.