Scotland and a wee birthday.

Well i went to Scotland for Easter, flew into Glasgow and took the train to Edinburgh. That night I wandered around the Nelson Monument.


Then wandered over to the royal mile and had dinner at a nice Italian registrant.

The next day was my free day, started the morning at 9:30 am opening of the castle.


I totally lucked out, they where doing a 21 gun salute for the queens official birthday. But first I did the free guided tour of the castle, learned a lot about the castle and it's surrounds, went in and saw the Scottish crown jewels and Stone of Destiny... More on the stone later :)



The sky was overcast but so bright it washed out most of the sky on my photos, it was kind of annoying, and neat. It was like having a large overhead fill flash..



Anyway I stayed around for the noon salute and watched them fire the guns :)



After that I walked over to the botanical gardens, it was a long walk, and the weather was warmer than it looked. Stopped for pizza along the way and then toured the gardens.



Went on the hot house tour, and that was cool, there was also a science center set up and that had some really interesting things. The gardens weren't in bloom yet, but there was the odd bloom, and lots of planting and work going on.



Anyway after that I walked back to the hotel and put in a really early wake up call. The next day was the start of the tour to the isle of Skye. Had to be at the bus stop at 8:30 am.. Good thing there was a hour time zone change, it made the wake up call that never came pointless...