Hope you’ve enjoyed having a wee nosy through all the previous posts that have been added to the site yesterday. There are quite a few photos in amongst those posts. I’ll try to make them more accessible in the future.

We also have a new Photo Gallery page on the website for the flickr photos so far.

But back to Europe. Our second day in Edinburgh was as stunning as the first. In the morning we just wandered around Old Town. Love the windy streets! There is also this imposing and moody monument in New Town, as the suburb is called, to a famous Scottish writer asnd poet.

It also happened to be Armed Forces Day across the UK, and there was a big parade on down Castle Hill with bands and soldiers marching.

There was a mixup half way through the parade where people (aka tourists) thought it was the end of the parade and poured onto the street. So we left. Turns out there was another half an hour of parade with bagpipes and everything.

Still, we did go to the National Scottish Museum. All 7 floors of it. It’s organised chronilogically from the ground floor up, where the ground floor talks about Scotland’s geological origins to the very top floor which talks about recent famous Scots. We spent most of our time on the middle floors looking at early Scottish culture.. This is a picture of a reconstructed Scottish highland hut.

Across the road from the museum is the statue of Greyfriar’s Bobby. Greyfriars Bobby was a Skye Terrier who became known in 19th-century Edinburgh after reportedly spending 14 years guarding the grave of his owner, John Gray, until he died himself on 14 January 1872.

That night, we decided not to stay in town for dinner and drinks. Instead, we got a bus going away from town until we hit a small stretch of shops with a pub. Turns out the suburb was called Juniper Green and the pub was the Kinleith Arms. It was a local pub where a pint of beer cost £1.50 and everyone was Scottish. It was pretty brilliant. We tried many of the local beers and ciders (Newcastle Brown was Rob’s favourite, but Caledonian was the big local brewery) and had a chat to some of the locals.Was pretty nice night.

All in all, Edinburgh was a winner and we’ll definitely go back.