Started the day with breakfast at the hotel, then we were taken for a tour of Edinburgh. We drove around while a local tour guide showed us place after place where famous people lived or worked - I can't even begin to remember all of them to be honest.
We then finished the tour at Edinburgh Castle where - unlike last night - we could actually go in :-)
The tour guide took us around and showed us where the various parts of the castle are and explained things we should look at, then we basically had the rest of the day free. We could have gone on to look at the Royal Yacht Brittanica but it didn't really appeal all that much.
One interesting thing about the castle was the Scottish National War Memorial:
It fits in so cleanly that you'd imagine it was built in the 1600s with the rest of the castle, but in fact it was designed and built in the 1920s - although from stones saved from an earlier demolition.
This is Mons Meg - a supergun of its day (in the 1400's):
After we finished at the castle we went back to the hotel. Lunch was from a chain called the Baguette Place - similar concept to Subway but with lovely baguettes instead of soft rolls. Yum. And, while we're on the subject of food, I continue to be amazed at the standard of supermarket food here. It's very easy to get simple, fresh pre-prepared meals from supermarkets here, with a far better range than you'd find at any supermarket at home. And, the value is excellent but even better, the quality leaves anything you'd find at home for dead. Case in point - a fruit salad I just ate. 170 grams for £1 (about $1.50) which I'll guarantee you is half what I'd pay at home. And, at home, if I was lucky the contents would be almost totally made up of three different sorts of melon, some completely flavourless pineapple, and maybe a grape or a strawberry. The one I just ate had at least three strawberries, some absolutely delicious pineapple, and some lovely fresh apple. No idea how it can be easy for a store in Edinburgh to getter better tasting pineapple than a store in Canberra....
Anyway, by this time it was raining, but we needed to go and find a laundromat. We could possibly have gotten our clothes laundered at the hotel, but my best estimate of the price is that it would have cost more than £100!!! For example, £5 for a shirt, £2.50 for a pair of undies. So, we hopped into a taxi and went to a fairly rough looking part of town and did the whole lot for less than £20 - and that includes £8 in taxi fares!
Last thing for the night was a 'Scottish show' - an optional extra on the tour where they feed you a fairly bland meal and then entertain you with a whole bunch of scottish singing / dancing / bagpipes etc.
The food was nice, although quite standardised, ie choice of two entrees and two main meals, one dessert. But, at intermission in the show, they served some haggis. I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.
This is Paul's haggis once he'd had enough:
And this is mine :-)
Yum!
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