DAY 7 – AUGUST 8th – DESTINATION: EDINBURGH

I don't even know where to begin... but it was a great day!!! Forgive me for having choppy and incomplete blog entries lately... I typed out the past few days, but they are on my MAC in the B & B. We are at an Internet Cafe now... OOPS! Was just told we had to leave! Tell you more later! :( …We woke up and had a light breakfast made by our real host Tom, the owner of Belford House. We had toast and warm croissants straight out the oven! He was very kind and gave us a lot of direction on different things to do and see in the city during the festivals… which was of great help as we were a little overwhelmed by it all! Oh and what a TERRIFIC day we had too! ☺ We shopped and walked and visited nearly every store on the Royal Mile which starts at the top of the hill with Edinburgh Castle and ends with the Hollyrood Palace (Summer home to the Queen). There really isn’t a ton to tell about this day as we just spent it all doing as I said. It was like we were in a painting. There were people EVERYWHERE, street performers, pamphlets being passed to you left and right, music all around. This WAS the time of year to go, that’s for sure!!! By the way, there is a very cute girl shop here called "Ness." Needless to say, I wanted EVERYTHING!!! :) Every one of the girls working there was sweet, asked us about our trip and just talked to us about normal Scotland life stuff! I felt like we were old school friends or something (and they were very nice to Matt too as he patiently spent far LONGER than he ever should have had to in a women's clothing store!!!) We also met a nice girl in a kilt shop who was from New Jersey. She moved here to study three years ago and never moved back because she loved it so much. I don't blame here! :)
We were not really sure what shows to or not to see, but we had more fun people-watching and shopping and taking photos that we didn’t really care to spend money doing anything else! :) We only looked at the castle -- grand as it was, but didn't go inside. We ate dinner at a street-side restaurant and got to people-watch as we ate. The food wasn't very good for as "nice" of a place as it claimed to be, but the experience was great, and that's all that mattered. We ended the night at the Elephant House café (where Harry Potter was first written) catching up on e-mailing, money matters, etc., and then walked around a bit more. It was ridiculous how many people (young and old!) were still out all over the main and side streets at 12:00am!!! WHAT A GREAT DAY!!!!