No lie, between the bus rides to and from Glastonbury and the train trip from Manchester to Edinburgh, we probably passed at least 10,000 sheep. Here are a bunch of them as tiny dots on a giant hill somewhere in Scotland.
Exiting the train station, we saw this. An awesome and imposing looking city, and a sweet change of pace after our time in Manchester.
This is the view down the street from our hotel. While it was just a bit hazy here, I should mention that we managed to make it 12 days in the UK before we had a single rainy day.
The Tron Kirk and St. Giles Cathedral. Both on the Royal Mile, about a block from our hotel.
I don't actually know what this is, but I referred to it as the Tower of Barad-Dur.
One night we went to a comedy show at The Stand on York St. 50% of our laughs were at jokes and the other 50% were at the fact that we couldn't understand a single word of some of the bits through the heavy Scottish accents.
Coming back from the Comedy Show - it looked pretty awesome when they lit up the castle at night.
One morning we ate at a place called the Haggis Cafe because they had free internet. The staff had opened 2 windows in the eating area, and this shrewd gull spent 25 minutes trying to figure out how he could come in and steal french fries without getting too near the dining humans. Eventually he got frustrated and started screaming at the window for a long time.
Edinburgh Castle. Another 12th century structure with 21st century admission prices.
The castle's on the top of a hill, so when you climb to the top there are some excellent views of the city. This is looking North over the New City and all the way to the Firth of Forth.
Some more structures within the castle grounds. Or maybe it's just two angles of the same structure. Who can remember when you take 480 pictures on vacation?
This was the exterior of a Scottish war memorial building inside the castle. Look Brady, another clock!
I don't remember what room this was in, but it was somewhere in the castle. That painting was pretty brutal - the one dude's stabbing through the other dude's chin and out his skull. It's like a Manowar album cover.
We took a guided ghost tour through the city one evening. It started right near this excellent pub - an establishment renowned for its crabs.
During the outdoor portion of our ghost tour, Maggie was used by the guide to demonstrate how witches were burned. The second photo gives a pretty good idea of what the underground part of the tour was like.
This is a photo of Calton Hill from down in the main part of Edinburgh. The path is Hume Walk (yay, Desmond!) and we walked on it to reach the monuments on the Hill.
The National Monument and the Nelson's Monument are two of the cool things up on Calton Hill.
This is a photo of Holyrood Park taken from Calton Hill.
On the New City side of town, there's a lovely park called Princes Street Gardens that overlooks all the cool old stuff in the Old City area.
Some views up the hill from Princes Street Gardens.
Among the goofy tourist attractions we visited in Scotland was the Edinburgh Dungeon. It was like one of our beloved Halloween walkthroughs, but you got to go on a stupid freefall amusement ride at the end. It was a fun time except for when they squirted us with water, pretending it was urine.
Butterman: "Do you want anything from the shop?"
Angel: "Cornetto."
Scottish Parliament. Cool, but not nearly as cool as the English one!