EIS –Day 2 in Edinburgh (Day 07)

EIS –Day 2 in Edinburgh (Day 07)

(8/24/2010) Today we started our day with an Edinburgh city tour. This morning we traveled around the town by bus with a local guide, Tom Wales, and learned a number of interesting points about the city and people. The city split between an “old” town and “new” town. The new town referring to the 200-year-old buildings that makes up this section of Edinburgh.

We ventured past houses of some famous people were born or grew up. People like Alexander Gram Bell, Robert Louis Stevenson, the current First Minister of Scotland, and others.

At the end of our city tour, we arrive at Edinburgh Castle. We walk in where we will pass to get to our seats for the Edinburgh Tattoo later in the evening.

As we enter the Castle itself, we find out that there are no steps even though the buildings of the castle are much higher than we are.

The whole complex resembles a spiral with a “road” turning counter-clockwise moving up to the top buildings.

We enter inside one of the buildings which house the crown jewels. Now they are not as elaborate, but these once belonged to the Kings of Scotland, but they are much older. The British crown jewels represent Great Britain, not England. England’s King melted the English crown jewels to pay for the fighting against Scotland.

After leaving the crown jewels, no pictures, they outlawed picture taking. We continued our trip around the castle taking pictures until we had to meet our tour guide and bus.

From the rampards you could look over the city and see quite a bit of the town and the surounding bay.  From this vantage point you could see anyone coming.

Once on the bus, we returned to new town where we how had a couple of hours to shop, etc.

Fortunately, I brought the voltage converter and receipt, Carmen, and I head off to find the store we purchased it. This time it didn’t take as long to find the store. Yesterday we checked with five stores before someone pointed out a shop that should sell the converter all taking a little over an hour. Today, 10 minutes we were at the store. We exchanged the converter and headed back to new town.

After returning to our hotel from the city tour, we have enough time to freshen up before the bus takes us to the Royal Yacht Britannia followed by dinner at a fifth floor restaurant overlooking views of Edinburgh Castle.

After dinner, we walked up to the Castle to attend the Military Tattoo. Bag pipes, drums, and other bands playing and marching before the Castle.

Until later, Bob and Carmen – EIS.