Scotland/Edinburgh castle

We are now in Scotland, we arrived in Scotland Oct. 2 on a ferry. The ferry ride over was not bad at all. The last ferry ride I forgot my wrist bands, and this time I had them. I think they helped because I did not get sick! I was very happy about that. Also this time we got a picture of our ferry!

When we got off the ferry, we started for our overnight lodgings, a B&B. On the way to our B&B we stopped in a little town where there was an ice cream shop. We had some ice cream! So far in every town that we have stopped in, we went to an ice cream shop. I hope we keep that up until that end of our trip! :) When we got to the B&B the lady showed us our rooms and then she called a restaurant to see if there was sitting for us and there was. The restaurant was called The Crown. It was a bar, the lighting was very dark and quiet in the corner where we sat. The food was good. I ordered BBQ back ribs with chips. They were very good and messy! Jack ordered something called The Hunter's Chicken with chips. Jack said "I would not order that again." [only because it was too much!] Bria ordered Homemade Tomato sauce with Pasta. Landon ordered a small pizza and chips. Dad ordered Steak and Ale pie with chips. Mom ordered Longtail Scampi with chips. If you do not know what chips are, I can tell you. Chips is what we know as french fries in our country, but in the U.K. they call them chips.

Saturday, Oct. 3, after we had breakfast at our B&B we headed for Edinburgh. We had planed to go on a walking tour, but we could not find the place that the tour started because on the website they did not say where they started. We tried for the 11am tour, but all it told us was in front of the only Starbucks in Edinburgh. Dad's GPS told us to go one place then it would tell us to go somewhere else. We never found it, until after the tour started, so we asked the guy who was doing it and he told us where. The next day, Sunday Oct. 4th at 2pm we found the place it started and we went on the tour. It was very interesting. The lady who did it for us was very nice and she had a lot to say. The tour was about 2 hours long. We walked all over Edinburgh!

Saturday Oct. 3 the day we were going to do a walking tour but did not, instead we went to Edinburgh castle for the day. The castle was very interesting. The one thing that I did not like about the castle was it was all about war. :( We had audio guides to tell us what was what. In one part of the castle there was a gun, they call it the One o'clock gun. They fire it every day at one o'clock. We got to see it get fired!

The one thing I liked about the prison in the castle was that they did not leave prisoners there to die. There were two big rooms and both rooms had hammocks for the men to sleep in and if there were too many men and not enough hammocks, then there were wooden boxes for the men to sleep in also. There was a big fireplace in each room to keep the men warm.

There was a chapel in one part with a wedding going on inside when we went to see it. We came back later when the wedding was over. When we went inside the chapel was very, very small. I guess it had to be a small wedding.

The castle is like a little town, because there are many different buildings. All the buildings have very interesting history in them.

There was a large room, called The Great Hall, where a man was showing people some of the instruments that the people would play in years long gone. The man had about 10 different instruments that he was showing. We missed the first quarter of his talk. The instruments that he was showing and playing were really neat! I am not going to put a picture of each instrument because I do not remember the names of all the instruments. ;( The picture of the instrument below is my favorite one that he played. :)

The Hurdy-Gurdy was my favorite because you could add strings and take away strings. When they first made the instrument it was a two person instrument. It was so big that one person had to turn the wheel and the other had to push the keys down to make the different sounds. :) But as the years went by it was cheaper to get one guy to do it then two. So they made it smaller.