So we went to Scotland! Woo!
When you enter Edinburgh Castle, you will find it is guarded by stone statues of Robert the Bruce and William Wallace (shown here.)
Also guarded by a bunch of empty, non-functional cannons.
You better watch out.
They roll...
They rock...
And they have stairs...
Scotland has a thing with unicorns.
Turns out, it's because it's their national animal.
There are several building inside the Edinburgh castle fortress.
Looks like one used to be a hospital.
Inside one of the buildings they have pretty stained glass.
And velvet window seats.
Here's a guard lion.
Even with all the guard guys, the cannons, the lions, and the unicorns, Kieran still managed to scale the castle walls and infiltrate the fortress. (Actually, he's lying on the ground pretending he's crawling up a wall so I can take a forced perspective shot for my photography class. How did I do?)
Once you storm the castle, and you don't know where to go, this handy sign can point you in the right direction.
Dramatic picture of bolts.
Church towers...
So we tried some haggis while we were in Scotland and it was pretty good. But the one thing we had to try (of course) was the haggis flavored chips. Definitely not as good, but the idea of putting a haggis on a chip on the first place just really didn't have much promise.
Welcome to Holyrood Park.
We hiked to the top of King Arthur's Seat.
And my dad fell off the cliff. (Luckily, I pulled out the camera in time....to get yet another forced perspective shot.) *No fathers were harmed in the taking of this picture.*
The view from King Arthur's Seat.
A golf course, of course. After all, we were in Scotland, land where they invented golf.
Pretty amazing geology in Scotland. It's sort of a volcanic island like Hawaii...only colder and windier and rainier.
Here's the view of Edinburgh from the Palatine Hill.
The castle is at the top on the right.
Flowers!
So if you want to know about Greyfriar's Bobby, he's a dog. They have a statue of him in Edinburgh. It's a famous story about a dog who was so loyal to his master that when the master died, he sat guarding his grave for 14 years until he died, himself. Now that's some dog!
Look - in the sky - it's a bird! It's a plane!
No, it's just a LOT of birds.
Like a LOT.
These are called gannets and they have a huge breeding area on an island off the coast north of Edinburgh.
This was a LOT a LOT of birds.
No, it didn't snow. That whole island is white because it's completely covered in birds.
We took a speedboat out to the island to look at the birds and we stopped to look at this cool castle. It's called Tantallon Castle.
This is the boat we went on, and our Captain, Colin. Who took us in the Firth of Forth. So he is technically Colin of the Firth. (My mom thinks that's funny.)
But what I think is funny is these stupid suits we had to wear.
Stay tuned for the highlands of Scotland.
