After our afternoon stop at Alnwick Castle, we drove another hour and a half or so to Edinburgh. It’s funny, as soon as you cross the border from England to Scotland, everything seems prettier…and we were not even to the Highlands yet.
Our apartments in Edinburgh were nothing special. We had to accommodate four adults and seven children, so we rented two apartments in the same building. Because it was August, it was hard to find anything decent for less than $200 a night.
Preparing for bed in our apartment, Robert pulled out the couch in the living and found a whole bunch of mouse droppings—eww….We called the landlord but all she said was “it’s a new mattress in the pull-out bed, so just vacuum it up”. Gross!
I was too scared to put any kids to sleep on it, so poor Robert had to be brave (I have a phobia of rodents).
Our apartments in Edinburgh were nothing special. We had to accommodate four adults and seven children, so we rented two apartments in the same building. Because it was August, it was hard to find anything decent for less than $200 a night.
Preparing for bed in our apartment, Robert pulled out the couch in the living and found a whole bunch of mouse droppings—eww….We called the landlord but all she said was “it’s a new mattress in the pull-out bed, so just vacuum it up”. Gross!
I was too scared to put any kids to sleep on it, so poor Robert had to be brave (I have a phobia of rodents).
The next morning, we caught a bus to the center of Edinburgh, to somewhere along the Royal Mile street. We took a free walking tour that gave us a great orientation of the city. Our guide was this bearded Scottish guy who offered us a perfect amount of educational and fun facts intermingled with quirky Scottish humor.
We covered a lot of area that morning. The kids were engaged and liked walking around. Even Mark did all right. I don’t care that he is four, when we go on long trips like this where we drag him to all our tours, it sure is nice to have a stroller. 
Robert and Merrill were listening intently.
Just to give you a glimpse of the city—the weather turned colder the week we were visiting. This is August 5th! And we are all wearing jackets.
According to the Free Walking Tour website, this is the sites we visited or talked about, but for some reason I only remember a few of them. The ones highlighted in red are the ones I remember. Pretty sad…and even was quite good at listening this time.
- Edinburgh Castle
- St Giles’ Cathedral
- The Royal Mile
- Old & New Towns
- Mercat Cross
- Greyfriars Kirkyard (cemetery) and Greyfriars Bobby
- Scott Monument
- Princes Street Gardens
- Grassmarket
- Site of Witch Burnings
- The original ‘Hogwarts’
- William Wallace and the Stone of Destiny
- National Museum
- Covenanters’ Prison
- Martyrs’ Memorial
- The Mound
- Tron Kirk
- The real Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
- The Scottish Enlightenment
Here is the view of Edinburgh Castle and a specially constructed stadium for Edinburgh Military Tatoo.
One of the stops at the end of our tour was at the cemetery. Apparently, you can have a very good view of the cemetery from the café that is located right next to it. It is called The Elephant House. And as you can see from the picture below—this was were Harry Potter was “born”. 
J.K. Rowlings got a bunch of inspirations for the names of her characters and for the looks of her buildings from what she saw outside her window while writing. For example, do you see who might be inspired by Thomas Riddell?
Or by William McGonagall?
This sign got Robert all excited and he was determined to go on this City of the Dead Tour. Our guide told us about some really freaky supernatural activities in this area
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Finally, we visited the grave of Greyfriars Bobby, who belonged to policeman, John Gray. When John Grady died he was buried at Greyfriars Kirkyard. His skye terrier spent the rest of his life sitting on his master's according to local sources (fourteen years in all). If I remember it right, Bobby was even made an official citizen of Edinburgh so that he can avoid being put down by law—homeless dogs could not just run around freely in the city.
They even have a statue dedicated to the dog.
All in all, it was a great tour, we learned a lot and enjoyed listening to the story of Edinburgh.
After the tour, and a fabulous lunch at Hula Café (where we all had to squish but it was worth it)…
, …we headed to Edinburgh Castle. We ran into this guy on the way. He was nuts!
The castle was quite cool, but mostly because of its historical importance and the views.
We did see the The Scottish Crown Jewels, but after seeing the UK one it was not as impressive. The kids were done with sightseeing by early afternoon. All we could get out of them were goofy faces.
This is a picture of the stadium for Military Tatoo that goes on in August. I hear it’s a must…although it was so expensive that we decided against it this time around.
And of course, gotta have a family picture in front of the castle.
Walking back to our bus stop, we ran into crowds of people! It was Fringe festival time in Edinburgh. I read about it online before we came—this is the biggest arts festival in the world. Basically a ton of people, both famous and unknown artis, come here to build their careers. This is all about theater, dance, comedy, musicals, operas, etc. Therefore, we saw of skits along the Royal Mile trying to get people to come to their evening performances.
One day in Edinburgh is not enough. We need to plan a long weekend or something to go explore it a bit more. Next time maybe we’ll take the train too.
This was Day 2 of our Scotland trip, and our adventures were just beginning.
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