This is one of the several times that excursions would be handled in a very disorganized fashion.
Veronica and I got to the Stardust Lounge early. The place was packed again and the girl in charge of getting everybody on their way decided she wanted to change things up a bit. She decided that those that were in the Stardust Theater first and waited in the there the longest would be the last to go.
We decided that we had already been through this situation once already...when were going on our excursion in Reyjkavik and that we weren't going to play that game again.
We ended up getting up when they called the first group, which comprised mostly of those people that came to the theater late, were the last ones in and in the theater the shortest amount of time.
As it turns out, we made the right choice. Unfortunately the bus ride took forever and we did not arrive into Edinburgh until approximately 11:20AM.
We found everything about this city to be great. The architecture was fantastic...it was like sensory overload.
The worst part about our visit to Edinburgh is that it lasted ony 3.5 hours. We quickly walked all over the place.
We found the Royal Mile and walked from one end almost to the other. When we got there, it was kind of quiet but it did not take long to get busy and congested. One thing that they have a lot of is double decker buses. Those things were everywhere and at times it made it hard to to able to take almost any type of photo because a bus would drive through the scene.
Veronica had a good time going shopping on the Royal Mile. We were told that there were only about 5 legitimate kilt and scarf shops in an approximately 1/8 mile of each other. They were clustered somewhat together. We were told that the rest of the shops outside of the 5 or so mentioned, were owned by foreigners and that the products they sold were not really made in Scotland products and were instead imported.
We found that the Scottish sales people were extremely knowledgeable about their products and they were very friendly.
While walking around and checking out the approved shops, Veronica found a couple of items that she was really interested in.
She decided that she wanted to wait on buying certain items and that we would return to the store later on and if we were in the area. We have both done this and said this before and usually what happens is that we never return back to the store to buy what we really wanted.
I did not want Veronica to miss out on the opportunity of getting something she really wanted and suggested that she go ahead and get her purchases now.
Veronica ended up buying not only some real Scottish scarves a hat, a wrap and some kilt socks.
She then found a Princess Diana shop that sold the official Princess Di memorial tartan plaid scarf line.
Besides shopping and taken tons of photographs, we went into Greyfriars Bobby... a very well know cemetery.
We also went to the Edinburgh Castle but ran out of time and we were unable to go inside.
On the way back to where we were to meet our shuttle bus, we found and went into a nice little french style bakery. We shared a couple of cupcakes and Veronica had a cappuccino.
After an approximately 1 1/2 hour bus ride back to the ship, which was docked in Greenock, we then had dinner, participated in a Trivia game contest and then headed back to our cabin. It was a rather long but highly satisfying day.
We decided to turn in early because tomorrow was going to be our final port of call day and it would be a long one. Tomorrow we would be going into Dublin, Ireland.
Even our feet made an appearance within the walls of this cemetery
These cabs were really cool...like what one might see in London
The outside light was really poor as far as us trying to take a photograph of this monument. The detail on this building was very intricate but we could not get a decent photo no matter what we did
Below are photos of Edinburgh Castle
Below is a blueberry cupcake...the icing had a really nice blueberry flavor to it. not too overpowering..just the right amount of flavoring.
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