Edinburgh

Left: outside the War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle
Below: Looking down over the city of Edinburgh from the Castle Walls

Last Friday morning we caught the train from Derby to Edinburgh which was a four and a half hour train journey. It was a nice trip, good train, very fast and lovely scenery along the way, some really nice rugged coast line as we got up nearer to Edinburgh. We checked into the Edinburgh Lodge which we were pleasantly surprised to find looked as good as on the internet! And as the day was cold we were pleased also to find that it was lovely and warm!!! On Saturday we caught the mandatory On/Off bus which we have decided is the best way to have an informed look around the cities (and they all seem to have them). That way we get the commentary on all the sites and we don't have to try and find all the individual highlights on our own in a city we haven't been before. Edinburgh is a very big city and has heaps of statues, monuments and the usual array of historic buildings we have come to expect on our trip around the UK. We saw the house where Robert Louis Stevenson grew up in Edinburgh, the Queens residence in Edinburgh, the lovely old Royal Lane and of course Edinburgh Castle which is fairly well fair in the middle of the city on this great big hill of rock! It is very big inside the walls and had a great military museum with some terrific displays of memorabilia. It also houses the Scottish Royal Jewels, which weren't a patch on the ones in the Tower of London. Anyway it was great to see it, certainly the biggest castle we have seen to date, and we've seen a few!! After we had done a few hours of sightseeing, we picked up our hire cars and Jenny and Joll went off south east to Stranrear where the Jolly's originally came from and then onto the Isle of Skye where Jenny's fathers family came from for a few days. David and I headed north up through Perth and onto Aviemore where we had booked at the Dalfaber Golf and Country Club. It was a lovely drive over a couple of spectacular bridges leaving Edinburgh and then through the lovely green countryside.