edinburgh

and back to edinburgh we went! we all loved this city - i think all of us would say it was our favorite stop because we just didn't expect it to be as wonderful as it was - we knew london and dublin would be cool, but edinburgh was a pleasant surprise. here are some views of the city.

with andy and claire in the foreground, that is the north sea in the background with the city of edinburgh spread out in the middle.


both this picture and the one above it were taken from edinburgh castle - more on that in a minute...

when we met up with laura later that evening, we hiked up calton hill (a public park area), which is in the background of this picture - taken from edinburgh castle.  calton hill looked SO FAR AWAY, but it really wasn't.  at least not when you were walking with good company.

edinburgh at dusk...this reminds me of some of the scenes in the movie mary poppins, even though that was london and this is edinburgh.  but maybe old school london looked like edinburgh does today?

okay, so backtracking a little. some of the photos above were taken from edinburgh castle, which was our first stop of the day. old castle, top of a hill, impenetrable fortress, blah blah blah. really beautiful. this is us at the bottom of the hill before the short hike to the top.


after visiting the castle, we met up with laura for dinner, a couple drinks, some haggis. you know, the usual. i didn't have the haggis - don't worry.


it was so fun to see laura, and she and my friends now have a mutual love for one another. it was great...exactly what i had hoped for! she told us about calton hill and walked up there with us, and then we found a delicious italian place to eat.  she took the bus back to glasgow at about 10pm, and we went back to our hotel to crash.  being on vacation is tiring.