Edinburgh, Day 2!

In my last post, I forgot to mention that Steve managed to rip his pants (right in the crotch, lol) while getting into the car. By that point, all stores had closed since it was Sunday (in England, there is a law that says shops, excluding restaurants and pubs, can only be only for a certain amount of hours) so first thing on Monday morning, we set out to get him some new ones since he only brought that one pair with him. After that, Steve had been talking about this mini camcorder Paul has and how it'd be great for while we're in Edinburgh so we went to check it out. I was not opposed to such a spontaneous purchase (though it does not compare to Dad's spontaneous Land Rover purchase) because I originally wanted to get a camcorder I first came to England (though I make do with the video clips on my compact camera).

Unfortunately, after purchasing the camcorder (we got the HD version too), we realized it only charges by USB and neither of us brought our laptops. We had a USB charger for the car but we couldn't really drive around aimlessly for hours while it charged! We did manage a slight charge and got a few test videos around the castle but I haven't gotten them onto my PC yet so more on that later.

Anyway, all of that took up the whole morning and we walked everywhere so I was also grabbing pictures along the way. Luckily, the weather was very nice and stayed that way the whole day! By the time we got to the Edinburgh Castle, it was lunch time. So we quickly got a bite to eat at one of the cafes next to the castle before heading in.


Inside the castle was the Scottish Crown Jewels. Unfortunately, they were nowhere near as impressive as the crown jewels at the Tower of London. Oh, and we weren't allowed to take pictures of them. But I did get some of the castle itself. It was crowded so most of the pictures inside are just your usual touristy pictures.

As you can see, the castle is perched on a hill/cliff so I got some pretty good pictures around the outside of it with no people in the way.

After seeing the castle, we went to another comedy show. It was an improv show, like Whose Line Is It Anyway? and a few of the comedians were from the original English version of the show. It was really funny!

We then had dinner at the hotel restaurant, which wasn't great unfortunately but our waiter was really nice.

After dinner, we went to what I felt was the highlight of the whole trip: The Military Tattoo. It was AMAZING. They also had military bands from different countries like China, South Africa and Switzerland. There were also dancers, fireworks, singers, etc. I'm working on getting the videos I took of it on my compact camera on the internet but it's proving near impossible. Apparently, my laptop just HATES the network, I've always had problems with it... so Steve has to upload the videos for me. For some stupid reason, my laptop just refuses to upload them and not only that but when I try to upload them, it causes the whole internet to stop working and I have to disconnect to the router and reconnect. It's not frustrating WHATSOEVER.

So anyway, hopefully I'll be back with the videos that Steve has uploaded.