Scotland Day 2

Edinburg Castle

This morning we drove to Edinburg to go to the Edinburg castle. We'd heard a lot of good things about it, so were excited to go. Unfortuneately, it was kind of a frustrating day with the kids. Bella seemed to want to eat all the time for one thing. Next time I go anywhere with a baby, I'm going to buy a bottle warmer. We'd fill our bottles with water before leaving, but they'd be cold by the time she wanted to eat. And most times she won't drink the bottle if it's cold. So sometimes I can find a microwave in a cafe or something, but if not, I have to find a bathroom and hold the bottle under the hot running water and warm it up that way. Backtracking a little in my story here--we bought tickets for the castle before we left the hotel (on the internet). We did this to avoid the long ticket lines which would no doubt take at least an hour to get through. So we got to the castle and walked past the long lines and got right in. We felt pretty good about planning ahead. By then Bella was hungry so we sat on the bench to feed her but the bottle was cold and she wouldn't drink it. So, I tracked down a bathroom and went to warm it up--which felt like it took 20 minutes--then got back to the bench to find a screaming Bella and very frustrated Garrett who was trying to make another bottle to console her. So, Garrett finally got her fed, with me taking the girls to the bathroom while we were waited. When all that was done we thought we could start looking around--but Paige had to go to the bathroom again, so Garrett took her this time. By the way, Paige has recently been potty trained! Garrett started before we left and she has done really well. She rarely has any accidents. We're surprised that she's done so well, considering she was so against it for so long. It just goes to show that they have to be the ones to decide that they are ready. She even wears underwear at night! That's a first for us. So, anyways, back to the story--when they got back from the bathroom, I kid you not, we walked up the path for two minutes before Paige had to go to the bathroom again! It was like this all day--feeding and bathroom breaks. So we were kind of in a cranky mood--especially since we had wasted an hour just sitting there when we tried to avoid that by pre-buying tickets. Oh well! We did get to look around at a lot of stuff and the castle was pretty neat. But, honestly by this time we had seen a lot of castles and this one didn't really offer anything new or different, so we were kind of done with castles. Plus by this time it was raining quite a bit, so we decided to leave the castle.

View of Edinburg from the castle

We did walk down the Royal Mile, which is the street connecting the castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse. (This is where the Queen lives for one week during the summer.) We didn't get to see that, though. But the Royal Mile was a neat street with beautiful buildings and abbeys.
Picture of beginning part of the Royal Mile from the castle.
It was terribly crowded, though. During the whole month of August there are all sorts of festivals going on in Edinburg. We were there during something called "Fringe" where there were a bunch of different people performing all up and down the mile. Some people were singing, playing instruments, dancing, etc. One guy was on a unicycle and was juggling with knives and flames--which was pretty cool. It was crazy there--almost too much for me. I really don't like crowds of people.

Part of the Festival

We walked around town some more trying to find our car and we ran into two missionaries. We stopped to talk to them for a minute--one was from England and the other was from Sweden. I just thought it was neat to see them in action. After we found our car we went back to our hotel and Garrett took the girls swimming while I got Bella fed and put to sleep. The girls love to go swimming, so that was probably the highlight of their day. This wasn't our most eventful day, but with kids, you can't really pack a bunch into one day. It just doesn't work. :) We would like to come some day without the kids. I bet it would be a whole different experience!!