the extraordinary castle

today dustin and i headed out to the castle right after breakfast. the best part was, on our way there we went through new town and discovered the original royal bank of scotland (a local saw us admiring the building and encouraged us to go inside) and the western portion of the princes street gardens! the delightfully unexpected detour was characterized by spring flowers, birdsong, morning sun, and a curving dirt path that climbed up the side of the fortified castle. this sure beats the north bridge route! we entered the castle and joined a guided tour which gave us tons of information on the various levels and structures within the castle walls. the place was huge and quite complex. dustin and i were both in awe over the scottish war memorial. the building was reconstructed in the 20s and its graphic stone details and casket holding a scroll of all the WWI dead scottish soldiers was very moving. we also saw the room where mary queen of scots gave birth to her son, and also saw the one o'clock cannon fire from the castle wall. (originally a navigational tool for ships on the nearby loch.) the cannon attracted a huge crowd and was super loud! :) after that, we wandered to the hub (a festival information center in an old gothic cathedral) and a few other places on the royal mile. we figured we might have to check out the scotch distillery tour in the next couple days but headed south to explore edinburgh university and have a snack. we grabbed a beer at a place called biblos on chambers street and then popped into the national museum of scotland. we decided it was best to save this for a rainy day and continued on to the edinburgh university area. we spotted the college of architecture and spied on a crit going on and peeked into some of the studios. another crusty architecture building! there was a long path splitting the campus which lead us to a huge park with lots of students playing pick-up soccer and ultimate. fun times! and lots of dogs here too. we were taking notes for when we talk to the letting agent tomorrow about a prospective area for a flat. we found ourselves seemingly miles from the city center and had to get back to familiar territory so we headed north for about 25 minutes until we landed back at princes street, grabbed a yummy pizza dinner, and came back to the hotel. now we're sitting here watching simpsons (surprise, surprise) giving our feet a rest and drinking peroni. what a great day! ...and they said it would rain. tomorrow we're supposed to meet a letting agent and have drinks in the evening with some of dustin's friends from work. it should be a fun and wet day and we hope to wander through more unfamiliar parts of the city.