Day 8
Oct 22/09
Edinburgh. Today was the day we would go see our first castle. First we needed breakfast, so off we went to find a restaurant that Trevor found on the internet called Toast. It took us a bit of time to find it, but we did. After we ate, we had a tricky experience trying to get our car out of where we parked. Trevor had commented earlier in the trip that he now understood the Austin Powers joke when he tries to turn around and has to move back and forth a bunch of times. I don't recall the part, but it is ridiculous to turn around on the roads. They are so narrow, and when you considered we are driving a car 1.5 times the length of any other car, we are definitely too wide to turn around. Trevor ended up having to back out of the alley for quite some time to get us out of our predicament. Next it was off to the castle. The castle sits on top of volcanic rock and overlooks the city. The views were amazing from there. We took a little tour and then looked at the Scottish crown jewels, which only have 3 items: crown, scepter, and sword. They are the oldest crown jewels in Western Europe and the second oldest in the world (the Hungarian crown jewels are older). They were nice but not as shiny as the English jewels. We also went into the War Memorial for WW1 and WW2 that is at the castle and Trevor believes he found his great-great uncle's name in the WW1 books!!! After we explored the castle I decided I wanted to see the beach so Trevor drove us over to the water and we walked up and down the beach. It was then time to find a hotel for the night (we hadn't showered for 3 days at this point and we weren't looking or feeling very wonderful). We ended up getting a room in the Travelodge (yup they have them here, but they're different here). We decided to eat at Ryan's pub that night which apparently is a very popular pub in Edinburgh, and then it was off to bed.
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