Ah, this weather is more like it!

So this is how my day began:

Wait.

Actually my day began with a lovely home-cooked breakfast, complete with tea, eggs, parma bacon, and toast and marmelade. (Also roasted tomahtoes, which I'm not crazy about, but of course I ate them without complaining since the rest was so delicious). And, special bonus, Erlend took my broken glasses and fixed them for me with gorilla glue while managing to still serve the breakfasts! 2 Cambridge St. B&B is a wonderful place.

OK, but after the glorious breakfast, this:



It was OK though. I went across the street to the little shop you can see in the video and bought a "cheap" umbrella for £3. Slightly damp, I arrived at the Royal Scottish Museum, which is where I spent the next three hours. It's a great museum, albeit a very nerdy one. (I know what you're all thinking - it's nerdy, that's why she loves it, and you're right!) I'm totally into the whole Scottish history thing now, and looking for a good, readable, comprehensive book on the subject. Bonnie Prince Charlie, Mary Queen of Scots, William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, Jacobites, all those kings named James...I'd love to get it all in order in my head.

I loved the signage in the museum...as if we're all Scots, fighting off the Roman invaders who "moved with the purpose of ants". And I so, so wanted to put a period at the end of the last sentence.

OK, moving along...I crossed the street to the Greyfriars church and graveyard. It was calm and peaceful place, but I didn't get into the whole Greyfriars Bobby thing because his gravestone was covered with grungy little stuffed animals and it creeped me out. But here's a picture of the graveyard, anyway:


I walked to the station to pick up Donica, which worked perfectly, we dropped her stuff off, and then headed to Edinburgh Castle...at last. I'd walked by it so many times already and not gone in.

I do love me some castles, and I loved this one. It's so big inside, with so many buildings, and so defensible - it just seems to grow up out of the rock - that you can imagine living in it and withstanding siege after siege. Well, I guess until your food and water ran out and stuff. But still. Here are Donica and I at the castle, Edinburgh New Town in the background:


And here is a nice picture, looking out across the Firth of Forth to St. Andrews, with a funny story. Our guide told us that people on tours ask all kinds of questions about what that land across the water is. Some want to know what part of Europe it is...some ask if it's France, since there's a telecom tower way in the distance that they think is La Tour Eiffel...and some ask if it's America. Wow. Our guide just said "That one was a bit worrying."

A final castle picture, because when I saw this I could not stop thinking of LOTR. "Light the beacon fire of Amon Din!"


This was a nerdy post through and through.