Scotland Part 2

Saturday:

Laura and the girls left to visit the grandparents, so Steve took us into Edinburgh. The rental car was returned the night before, so this was the first time we rode the bus in Scotland. We rode on the top of the double decker, of course.

First, we walked by Arthur's Seat. Then, the palace. Apparently the Queen was there. Unfortunately, we were unable to have tea together. Next was Scottish Parliament. That place does not look like a Parliament building. It looks like a modern art museum from the outside. We continued on from there and walked up  the Royal Mile.

After walking around for a while, we ended up getting chips (fries), which we ate next to this slightly-scary goth grumpy-faced street performer. I think she was playing a uke with some incense attached to the top. Some guy who looked like a cowboy came up and  talked about the incense. Really weird. Also, our chips came with little plastic fork things, so I ate mine with a fork. 

We also went by an art gallery before heading home. I love music, but I am not an art person. They should have music gallery?s where they display lots of music facts and have different songs for you to listen to. That would be fun.

So, I wasn't very enthused about the art gallery, but there was one thing that was interesting. A "Future Library" is being created. The caption read: "A forest in Norway is growing. In 100 years from now it will become an anthology of books. Every year a writer is contributing a text that will be held in trust, unpublished, until 2114." From 2014 to 2114, works are submitted (100 in all), and then anyone with a certificate in 2114 gets a full set of the published works, printed on the paper made from the forest growing for this purpose. Really cool idea, actually. I kinda wish I could have a certificate so I could pass it down to my kids or whatever. Probably won't live that long. I would be 118. Haha. Probably wouldn't want to live that long anyways. You gotta move on at some point.

When we finally got home, Steve made steak pies and mashed potatoes that were (no surprise here) really good. He and my dad then left to watch the Costa Rica vs Netherlands game at a pub, while we took the living room.

So proud of the Sele. Even though they didn't win, they got extremely far, and did extremely well. Shoot-outs are awful. It's practically luck as to who wins a shoot-out. I was sad I couldn't be in Costa Rica for all this, but I am in Europe after all. Guess I can't complain.

Sunday:

Today we were off to see another castle! Yay! This one was called Linlithgow. On the way, we got to ride the train for the first time. Also yay.

Their was a special event happening on this day at this castle that included jousting and tents and stuff like that. Shout out to Hoggtowne Medieval Faire because that's kinda what it felt like (except not as much of selling goods). So, we checked out the castle, saw a "Royal Falconer" guy, and then sat on the hill to eat our lunch and watch the show.

Jousting is not really the most exciting thing in the world. It's interesting, but it mostly just seems like a lot of the same thing happening. It's fun to cheer for a certain guy or whatever, but you don't really get super connected to them.

Anyways, we headed down the hill after to look at the tents. There were some of the weapons and armor type tents to show the kids what it was like, and some food tents, but the awesome thing they had was a writing tent.

Here, you could take a quill or a wooden pen to dip in the ink well and try to copy the Gothic writing styles. It is so much harder than it looks. Controlling the ink is super confusing. There was a woman in charge of the tent who would make bookmarks with your name on it written in the certain style with the specially made ink. So, I definitely got a bookmark because that's just straight-up awesome.

We saw a little of a show about the different soldiers and their weapons before we left and caught the train back home.

Homemade pizza for dinner. Yay!

Monday:

New day, new castle. We had to take the "bus from hell" to be able to get to Craigmiller castle. Steve named this bus in this way because the route the bus takes is really weird and follows a strange  pattern. But, it took us near the castle.

Getting off the bus, we had to walk up a road to get to the castle. And this road turned into a non-sidewalk curvy road that feels really dangerous to be walking up.

Once we finally made it up to the castle, we spent a good while exploring it. Started off near the prison and cellar. Frankly, the low ceiling of the cellar made me conclude that being imprisoned in the cellar would be much worse than being imprisoned in the prison. Except there'd be food. Whatever.

There were a million kitchens in this castle, but the first one we went in had a really big enclosed oven. Not just a fireplace. You could tell, this was a legit oven. So, of course, when you have a great castle oven, you get inside of it. Which I did. And brother and sister also did. We took oven selfies and made jokes about "getting baked" and generally chilled (haha) in the oven before getting out and exploring something else.

Kitchen #2 had a hole between it and a hallway and so my dad looked through the hole and told me to go to the other side. It was pretty high up, so I reached my hand up to try to see if I could reach his and inches from my hand, I saw movement. I quickly took my hand away from that. My immediate instinctual thought was rattlesnake, which makes absolutely no sense because 1. They don't have them in Scotland 2. Even if they did, one probably wouldn't chill there and 3. Rattlesnakes rattle. This fluttered.

Turns out it was some awkward teenaged pigeons. We took some pictures as they tried to flutter at us to go away, until we actually did.

This castle was pretty well perserved, so we had much to explore before we left. When we did, we discovered that there was a path on the other side of the road that we had walked up. Naturally, we decided to follow that less deadly route and we ended up exactly where we needed to be. Why nobody we'd talked to knew about this path is beyond me. It had a fair amount of users.

Once we got home, my dad and Steve went to a music studio to play around and record stuff (original and covers) before they came home to us and Steve made fish and chips. Good stuff.

Tuesday:

Edinburgh Castle! Our last one. It was a pretty cool castle. We got to check out the crown jewels, which was really impressive. No pictures allowed. Mary Queen of Scots continued to impress me (I really need to read some books about her).

They also had multiple prisons, so that was cool. They were mostly prisons of war. It was interesting because some Americans were imprisoned, and they were basically the worst off of the different nationalities. Stop hatin' on us, guys! There was also an early version of the US flag etched into the door. Now that's pretty cool.

Overall, Edinburgh Castle is one of the best here, and it's really well-kept (and touristy). But honestly, I was a bit glad to be done with the castles. 10 is quite enough for one week.

We had a quick meet up with Steve's brother at the old Scottish Parliament building before Steve left to pick up Laura and the girls, and we took the bus home.

My dad made homemade spinach lasagna. Then we watched the Brazil vs Germany game. If you missed that one, my gosh, you missed a big one. 1-7 is an incredible end score. No shoot-out needed here. When Brazil scored their one goal, the commentator called it "the most pointless goal in world cup history." Ouch. Brazil was missing 2 important teammates, but geez. It was a killer game. The Brazilian players (and the rest of Brazil) were sobbing at the end of the game, which was pretty depressing. Germany and the 2 Brazilians who couldn't play were comforting the guys. I think the whole world was shocked by that game. Poor Brazil.

Wednesday:

Twas a chill day. We hung around the house for most of the day. Steve and my dad figured out Happy Birthday on the guitars so they could call Steve's mom. I filmed as everyone sang.

The girls found snails in the garden, and started making a whole village for them. There were snail races, a swimming pool, a movie theater, and many many bedrooms. By the end of the day, there were over 20 snails. The neighbor girls also helped in this creation.

We went on a walk in the afternoon and spent some time in some gardens. Ayden gave me a flower petal.

We went home for our last evening and had burgers. Also, haggis. Not as bad as you'd think. I probably wouldn't eat it on a regular basis, but it really wasn't all that bad.

Then (yay!) another game was on, so we watched Argentina vs Netherlands. A much more reasonable game. We went to bed as my parents finished packing.