Edinburgh, Scotland

in front of the castle

We flew into Edinburgh from Amsterdam and I gotta say we were a little concerned at first for a couple reasons: 1) when we asked our taxi driver what the beautiful fields of yellow flowers are he pointed at a dandelion on the side of the road and said that's what is growing in the fields. Um, yeah - we're from Michigan and are pretty sure growing entire fields of dandelions aren't a thing. So we all rolled our eyes behind his back and knew we'd have to ask someone else later (turns out it's "rapeseed" which is grown for cooking oil, from what I can tell it's another name for canola oil; it's a very pretty yellow flower and looks nothing like a dandelion Mr. Taxi driver)...and 2) he had to let us out across the street from our hotel because it was seriously under construction and he couldn't get close. I'm talking totally under construction with scaffolding and plastic the entire front of the huge hotel. Uh oh, I was sure I was going to get in trouble for choosing this one haha. Turned out once we were inside it was beautiful behind the scaffolding and we were not inconvenienced very much at all. Whew. Anyway...

Edinburgh is a great city, probably my favorite of the whole trip. It's big but not too big, safe, tons of things to see (we did an open-air bus tour of the city, I def recommend those to get a good pretty quick overview of any new city you go to time permitting); food was great (check out my pic below of the best fish and chips I've ever had, they used panko breading and it was fabulous!); people very friendly and helpful. At our first Scottish dinner the rest of my group tried Haggis for the first time but I was chicken (no, not chicken - more like just grossed out! do you know what haggis is? look it up and tell me you want to eat that) - they all loved it so there ya go. We did a tour of the Edinburgh Castle which is very impressively set on top of a huge rock mountain in the middle of Old Town, I guess lots of groups tried to overtake it thru the years with not much luck - look at the pic to see why it was a great place to build your castle!

PS: if anyone cares or is wondering (or has a bet with anyone) the proper way to say 'Edinburgh' isn't like we would say it (I said edin-burG) but even though that's totally acceptable and everyone knows what you mean and won't correct you haha, there will be some know-it-all in your party that insists you say it in the Scottish way which is more like "edin-burrow" or "edin-burra" and correct you every time. LOL. (yes that made me say it edin-burG just to annoy him hahaha, whatever). Now you know.

Edinburgh Castle

overlooking part of the city towards the ocean. bottom left corner
 of this picture shows the "cemetery for soldier's dogs" at the castle.
the dog cemetery is still in use today.

we hiked up a big hill, oh geez I don't remember what it's called!
We had a great view of the city from up there, lots of monuments and trails...
saw this cute house/castle on our walk up. 

check out the old phone booth turned into an ATM - good thinking.

best fish and chips I've ever had! and now my mouth is watering...