My First Castle!

 On our first full day in Scotland, we toured that big old castle on the hill, Edinburgh Castle. It wasn't a single solid structure like I thought—we were out in courtyards a lot of the time. It's an amazingly old and cool place, and the views of Edinburgh and the sea are the best.

Walking into the castle grounds (the castle keep?)...

I liked how the castle was built right into the hill. You can see why they would have done that. Defense! 

It was built on an extinct volcano, and the hilltop has been fortified in some way since 900 BC! 😮

Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to the future king (James the Sixth, oops, I mean James VI) in this castle.

Codpieces make me giggle. 😄

I would have enjoyed adding one of these royal bears to my souvenir teddy bear collection, which is currently somewhere in a box, but I didn't have the luggage space for it, so I settled for taking a picture instead. 

This armory was pretty cool. There was way more to it than this.

The view 😍

St. Margaret's Chapel is the oldest building on the castle grounds. It dates back to the 1100s.

Hiiii!

We ate lunch in a cafe there. (I personally think they should name it the Castle Cafe. 😄) My salmon, salad, and lemonade were very good. The millionaire's shortbread in Scotland is delicious and was my favorite dessert over there.

The castle has various museums that we toured. Here is one picture:

War libraries!

At 1:00 every day, there's a cannon shot that lots of people gather for. It was a historic practice that helped ships set their time.

More pretty views 😍😍

This cathedral was stunning and dramatic every time I saw it!

Touring Edinburgh Castle was one of my favorite things we did on the trip. It was my first European castle, but not my last. There was a castle (and a palace) that we saw a few days later that I liked even more. Stay tuned!

I Finally Went to Europe! Scotland, Part 1 of 382

 ...and it was amazing!

I've been procrastinating a bit on doing these posts about Scotland because I don't feel that I can do it justice, and I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to things like that. But I'm just going to bite the bullet and get them done. Mostly pictures with some brilliant commentary interspersed. Ha ha.

For one magical week in April, my mom, my sister Jennifer, my brother Nathan, his wife Kat, and I took a trip to Scotland as a gift for my mom's 70th birthday. I love traveling, I loved Scotland, and it was so much fun! I definitely want to go back.

We flew out of Boston on a Wednesday evening overnight to Amsterdam, then took a flight that morning to Edinburgh, Scotland.

Here we are in Boston, at the beginning of our journey!

I hadn't had a full meal on a flight in many years. It was surprisingly good!

Pretty bouquets of fake but real-looking tulips in Amsterdam's airport (which was huge).

We stayed at this hotel during our time in Edinburgh. It was nice, and it was within walking distance to a lot of things we saw and did.

We explored some of the city on foot the day we arrived.

I thought it was the coolest that when you looked down the alleyways, there was Edinburgh Castle up on the hill! 

Another alley, another view. I got more used to it after the first day or so, but it never stopped being neat to have that big piece of history up there overlooking the city. 

Owls and other birds in a shop window

I think of David whenever I see bee things. This is where we ended up eating a late dinner that evening.

Cute Highland "coos"!

We tried a few times to eat here at The Last Drop, but it was small inside, and we couldn't get in with our group of five at the times we were there. {That's what next time on another trip is for!}

This was a picturesque, curving street that supposedly inspired J.K. Rowling in her Harry Potter writing. (More pictures to come in future posts!)

We had lunch at this place where I tried "cullen skink" soup (a fish chowder) for the first time. I'd been eager to try it after one of my co-workers told me about it. It didn't disappoint and was delicious!

Some other random sightings on our outing that day...

If I had a little girl...

There's Mom in the "Scottish room" of a used bookstore we visited.

Agatha Christie is one of my favorite authors. Not surprisingly, she's popular in Scotland.

View from my hotel room

After resting (I took a much-needed nap!) at the hotel for a little while, we went back out again for the evening to see more of the sights of Edinburgh.

Check out that cathedral!

I thought Salem was bad (and it was), but the U.S. has nothing on Europe when it came to the killing of (supposed) witches.

Outside of Edinburgh Castle. We toured it the next day (subject of my next post!).

More owls

Real, true, classic British phone booths!

And a real, true, classic Scottish bagpiper!

So much history in all of these buildings! This was a really cool thing about Europe. It's so much older than the United States.

They were not to be resisted!

We didn't stay here, but I liked seeing a Holiday Inn Express in Edinburgh. It's probably my favorite hotel chain!

As I previously mentioned, we had a late dinner at The Beehive.

My baked mac & cheese, salad, and bread were so good!

This was me trying to figure out the exchange rate and how much a dollar is worth in Scotland as compared with America. 😄

I slept well that night. I was so happy to be there! Next up: Edinburgh Castle.