There and Back Again ...: A Day in Edinburgh, leaving for Loch Ness

We decided that we needed to do some laundry, so we spent a little time that morning washing our clothes! :)

As we walked back to our room we passed this cute little church.

This was the outside of where we stayed that night!

As we were packing our car, it all of the sudden started to pour! So we hopped in the car for cover! :)

To get into the city we took the bus and found that everything is plaid! :)

We started seeing more bagpipers as we got into the city! :)

This is a view looking up at the Royal Mile.

This is the view as we walk up to the Royal Mile to get to the castle!

We made it to the Edinburgh Castle and the first thing that we saw was the canon that goes off everyday at 1pm. The gun would fire each day to help keep time for the ships in the port and out in the bay. You might be thinking, "why don't they fire off a shot at noon each day? Why is it at 1pm instead of 12 noon?". Well, the answer is simple: the Scots are a very practical people, and they say "why waste 12 shots when 1 shot will do just fine".

The gun has been firing for a very long time, every single day. There is a map in the museum that was used in the olden days to calibrate your watch; basically it is a map with rings and if you are a certain distance away, then you are a respective number of seconds off of 1pm. This would account for the time it takes the sound of the canon to travel through the bay.

This was another canon that we found inside a museum! :)

This was kind of cool because its the propeller (air screw, as they call it) of a plane whose guns were not synchronized with the propeller!

Here is a close up shot! :)

As we walked around we found this statue in the courtyard! :)

This is the original flag from the battle of Waterloo! It is the flag the was flown by Napoleon and his troops.

This is a cute little chapel. It's called Mary's chapel I think? One of the queens, Mary, would always come to this chapel to pray and eventually she ended up dying here of a broken heart when she was told that her husband died at battle.

It was a really cute little chapel that is still used today for weddings and so on. Although the chapel is very small, only big enough for maybe 20 people! :)

This was a huge canon, Mons Meg, that was actually used for many different battles; it eventually was retired because one of the shots burst the seams. It was sitting outside the chapel.

They had canons all around the castle. This canon sat where the old tower used to sit. During one of the battles the tower was destroyed and the enemy raided the castle. After this all happened they rebuilt on top of where the tower sat and fortified it with canons.

The tour/audio guide ended up bringing us down to where the old tower of the castle sat. The tower was where the military units would sleep and a big banquet/eating hall was here.

After we went into a museum that told us about the kings and queens and about the crown jewels and so on...

After seeing the crown jewels (we couldn't take pictures of them) we found our way into the grand military hall. The roof was original to the building! :)

Next we found our way into the dungeon, American, French and Germans have all been prisoner in this dungeon during the wars.

This was the prison for the Scottish troops who were out of line.

This is Nathan in one of the rooms. It was for solitary confinement.

Some mannequin's showing us how it would have been. This was a guard getting a prisoner ready for his stay.

This is the castle from inside the grounds and our last view as we left the castle.

We found a church.

Later we found some books about the clans in Scotland and we found my family!? :) Afterwards, we looked for other familiar family names and we found ...