Edinburgh, Scotland!

Ok, so I know it has been forever since my last post, sorry about that! So I still have 2 more cities from my Europe trip to post about! It may seem pointless at this point since I've been home for 3 months now....but I wouldn't want to leave them out. The last city I posted about was Paris, after Paris the tour went to London for 2 days then after the guided tour was over, Shannon (my mother-in-law) took us to Edinburgh, Scotland for a night and then we went back to London to play on our own for a few days....ALOT happened in London, so I have decided to save that for last and go ahead and talk about Scotland! So when you think of Scotland what comes to mind? Most likely you think of bagpipes and men in plaid skirts (kilts), that is what always comes to mind for me when I think of Scotland, well since my visit a new thing comes to mind also...castles! So we took the train from London to Edinburgh and when we were pulling into town we immediately saw castles everywhere! The building that weren't castles were so beautiful that they could have been!!! So we were completely in awe upon exiting the station, so as we looked around and were trying to figure out if our hotel was close enough to walk to or if we needed a cab.......we hear bagpipes!!!! No kidding within 5 minutes of our arrival we heard bagpipes, it almost sounded like they were being played over a citywide loud speaker at first. We walked around a little and there, across the street from the station is a Scottish man playing his bagpipe for the people...and what is he wearing other than a true Scottish kilt! Welcome to Scotland, right?!!! I was SO excited, I mean how cool is that? Scotland has ALWAYS been a country that I country on my wish list to visit and here I am standing here, fresh off the train, and watching a Scottish man dressed in the traditional Scottish garb, playing the bagpipes for me!!! So anyways, there was this park area right there so we kinda wandered around a bit(we only brought overnight bags since we were only there for a night and we left the rest of our stuff with the concierge back in London) then I went and found a cab to ask a driver if he knew how far away our hotel was, he said it was walking distance and under a mile, but then he made it sound like it was clear on the other side of town, so after returning to my comrades and relaying the info we opted for a cab ride since we didn't want to end up lost! Good thing we did, the hotel REALLY was on the other side of town, WAY more than a mile. So we were too early for check in, so we left out bags with the front desk and went off to explore! We ended up at the Edinburgh Castle for a tour, of course since it is a castle and the queen lives there sometimes when in Scotland, it is beautiful! It is also HUGE! While we were there they were having a press conference for the Edinburgh Film Festival that just happened to be going on and we learned that Keira Knightly and Sienna Miller were 2 of the MANY celebrities there! Unfortunately we didn't get to see them, but we saw many cars driving away with very dark windows and you can bet that these cars carried celebs! After the castle we decided to walk around, shop a little and get dinner before going back to the hotel early since we were getting up early the next morning to explore lots more and hop on our evening train back to London! We get back to our hotel and check in and they inform us that our room is across the street! Weird, but ok, so we get to our rooms and they are really neat. The hotel is in a VERY old renovated building, needless to say it kinda felt like we were in a castle for the night the way the rooms looked. So because the building is so old, there is no A/C, being the REALLY hot blooded person that I am, this causes a problem, so I called and asked for a fan to be sent over, they assured me it would be there withing 20 minutes! I never got it! I had a rough night since I was SO hot, but oh well, I'm in Scotland! Make the best of it, right! The next day we got up early and went to the Royal Yacht Britannia, which is the yacht that the Royal family used to travel until they retired it in 1999. Very cool to see! Next we went to the Palace of Holyroodhouse (not a misspelling), which we were told is the Queens preferred place of residence when in Scotland! Apparently the Queen holds a huge party there every year during the first week of July, well we were there the end of June, so we saw all the giant white tents that they were setting up for the event! We explored a little more then got back on our train to go back to London, since it is a 4 hour ride we got back pretty late and we EXHAUSTED, but we had a VERY early morning the next day! Scotland was a very neat place to visit and I definitely want to go back some day to have more time to explore! Visit if you get the chance!