Monday we walked to the Royal Mile and stopped at some souvenir shops. Saw lots of tartan! Later we went on a hop-on-hop off bus tour of Edinburgh. That’s a nice way to get a quick overview of the main highlights of the town. After the tour we headed to Edinburgh Castle. We had a very filling lunch in the Castle café. I finished off lunch with a slice of carrot cake and a cup of Earl Grey tea. Yummy! We all enjoyed the Castle. There were some very nice displays. Ltmgamer and Det55 had audioguides and really enjoyed listening to the narration and telling us interesting bits. We saw the Scottish crown and the Seat of Destiny also called to Stone of Scone.
We closed the Castle and headed back to the apartment. Paul and I went back out and found a pizza place where we got a couple of pizzas to bring back to the crew.
We were headed to the town of Dalgety Bay, Scotland to meet with Maretta’s friends from the former Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. On the way we stopped and explored Blackness Castle, a rugged old castle perched on the water’s edge. It has been a castle, a prison, a military outpost and more recently a setting for the Outlander cable tv show. We piled back into the car and continued on to a hotel in Inverkeithing.
After relaxing for a couple hours we made our way to the Drydale’s house for dinner. We had a wonderful evening. Mr and Mrs Drysdale are delightful and dinner was delicious. Paul’s parents met the Drysdales when they were all in Kinshasa, Zaire in the early 1980’s. Surely in some language there is a word for “being able to reconnect with friends you haven’t seen in decades and having it be just like you just saw them last week”.
It was fun share what we all have been doing. One of their daughters stopped by so that was a treat to be able to visit with her as well. We urged them to visit us in the United States. Hopefully it won’t be another couple decades before our paths cross again.
Afterwards we headed off to Hadrian’s Wall. Unfortunately we ended up taking a very winding route and it got rather late (and dark!). The sites we were headed to close early in the off-season so we decided to continue on to the hotel in Durham in Northern England instead. We did see some lovely views and highland cattle.
Next England!