Posting from Scotland.
So Craig and I arrived about 8 hours ago. It's currently 4:24 pm local time. The plane ride wasn't too bad. Continental had OK food and there was a lot of "on demand" entertainment. My plan of not sleeping the night before worked as I was snoozing off and on during the 1st part of the trip (from LAX to Newark). A short layover and unexpected (an unannounced) gate change, and 20 minute wait on the tarmac later, we were flying to Edinburgh. I slept for most of the 5+ hour trans-atlantic portion of the flight, waking up at 6 a.m. -ish local time.
The good thing about arriving at 8 a.m. is that we have the whole day to do stuff. The bad thing is that we couldn't check into our hotel for another 7 hours. The airport wasn't too busy and we got through customs without any issue. Took a cab to the hotel and left our bags with Reception until our room was ready for us to check into.
Edinburgh Castle was only about a mile from our hotel room so we decided to go check it out. On the walk there, we stopped at a sandwich shop for some yummy breakfast. We took our time getting to the castle and explored some side streets along the way. They're kinda like alleys, but without the icky/scary factor. Once we got there, it turned out that they had just openned for the day.
Once we got to the castle, we explored as much of it as possible. The view of the city from the castle walls was breathtaking (pictures to follow). I'm going to let
kenderjedi write up the details of what we saw. :) But in short, we saw the place where they housed POWs. There was an awesome memorial to fallen soldiers and mini-museums. We saw the Royal Apartments (must smaller than I'd imagined), the Main Hall, Prison (for POWs) and the crown jewels. There was also a 1:00 p.m. ceremonial firing of a cannon. Apparently, this was a standard time-keeping practice that let people know exactly when 1:00 p.m. was, before there was a time standard or the creation of time zones. Some parts of the castle was very touristy, but it was awesome. I got some pictures of Craig next to a 6-ton cannon thuat was actually used for ceremonial purposes (after they discovered that it was too clunky to move around to battlefields). It's amazing how big and clunky these cannons used to be.
After going over nearly every part of the castle, we walked back to the hotel to check in. Now, I'm ready for a nap. :)
I think we'll take a day-tour of the city and the surrounding bits tomorrow. We check out of this hotel on Thursday to go to Loch Ness (I think) and the Isle of Sky.
The good thing about arriving at 8 a.m. is that we have the whole day to do stuff. The bad thing is that we couldn't check into our hotel for another 7 hours. The airport wasn't too busy and we got through customs without any issue. Took a cab to the hotel and left our bags with Reception until our room was ready for us to check into.
Edinburgh Castle was only about a mile from our hotel room so we decided to go check it out. On the walk there, we stopped at a sandwich shop for some yummy breakfast. We took our time getting to the castle and explored some side streets along the way. They're kinda like alleys, but without the icky/scary factor. Once we got there, it turned out that they had just openned for the day.
Once we got to the castle, we explored as much of it as possible. The view of the city from the castle walls was breathtaking (pictures to follow). I'm going to let
kenderjedi write up the details of what we saw. :) But in short, we saw the place where they housed POWs. There was an awesome memorial to fallen soldiers and mini-museums. We saw the Royal Apartments (must smaller than I'd imagined), the Main Hall, Prison (for POWs) and the crown jewels. There was also a 1:00 p.m. ceremonial firing of a cannon. Apparently, this was a standard time-keeping practice that let people know exactly when 1:00 p.m. was, before there was a time standard or the creation of time zones. Some parts of the castle was very touristy, but it was awesome. I got some pictures of Craig next to a 6-ton cannon thuat was actually used for ceremonial purposes (after they discovered that it was too clunky to move around to battlefields). It's amazing how big and clunky these cannons used to be.
After going over nearly every part of the castle, we walked back to the hotel to check in. Now, I'm ready for a nap. :)
I think we'll take a day-tour of the city and the surrounding bits tomorrow. We check out of this hotel on Thursday to go to Loch Ness (I think) and the Isle of Sky.