Edinburgh, Scotland  Christmas/New Year's 1999 Road Trip This is the view from my hotel room at the Holiday Inn in Edinburgh. What you see here is a little outdoor mall with Sainsbury's (a huge all-purpose grocery store), KFC (!), and several other small shops. It's only a short distance from the hotel. I went to Sainsbury's to explore. It was a different experience. They organize products differently over there and many of the containers have different shapes! Interesting... These pictures were taken upon our arrival to Edinburgh. Look at all the old buildings! It's tough to imagine that this city used to be notorious for it's odor (people would empty their chamber pots into the street!). Today, it fairly clean and a great place to visit.   Here I am on the train to London after spending time in Edinburgh. This happy guy next to me kept asking me about the book I'm reading. That's a book I read for one of my classes: Amusing Ourselves to Death - very good read and I highly recommend it.  The Edinburgh Castle Tour My ticket stub and the view of the Royal Mile from the castle. We (Mom, my brother, my sister, and I) had just walked the this mile uphill to get to the castle. Excellent exercise! Upon arrival in Scotland, we decided to take a tour of the city's main attraction: The Edinburgh Castle - home of the Scottish Crown Jewels. This is a working castle in the sense that it is still used by the Scottish, so it was in very good shape and the tour was well done. You could get free portable CD players that you used to take a self-paced tour of the castle. I liked this idea, since we decided to split up for this tour and meet back at the front gate after two hours. This is the front of the castle. Even from a distance it looks huge. I was really looking forward to wandering around in it, especially after touring the Blarney Castle in Ireland. This castle looked huge in comparison. The wind today was very strong! Almost blew people down. As it turned out, two hours was a good amount of time to set aside for this tour. I managed to cover all the castle's open sections. This is a close-up of the castle's front gate. Walking though this gateway was a challenge today as it felt like walking through a wind tunnel! Once you got past that main gate, you could pick up the audio players and there was a gift shop available there where they sold all sorts of goodies, including tartans, scotch whiskey (duh), Walker's Shortbread (my favorite!!), and countless other goods. I found it to be a welcome break from the wind. After you pass through the massive inner gate, complete with a heavy metal gate and inner wooden doors, you arrive here. This is where the cannons for the castle are positioned to defend against an attack. There are several exhibits to the left, explaining several historical events. There was brick EVERYWHERE. Sure...very historical and it may even look nice, but it's not too comfortable for a walking tour! These three photos were all taken from the same vantage point. I loved this view of Edinburgh. You could see the train station (at the bottom of the pics) and the downtown area. Notice, if you will, that the rocks of the castle are covered with moss. EVERYTHING seemed to have moss growing on it. Not far from where these pictures were taken, there was a telescope for spying on the residents and visitors of Edinburgh. It was actually pretty cool because you could see all the way to the water.   This is the building right next to the "Pet Cemetery" at the castle. Yep, that's right! They buried their pets in a little area that is in the center of the picture shown here. Very creepy. The building shown here is a chapel built to honor those people died in all of the country's wars. There are written records with names of the people who died. Very beautiful chapel. The building to the right in the picture is where the crown jewels were housed as well as some rooms that were decorated for visitors to view. It was a nice building to visit and a welcome shelter from the cold and the wind.