Visiting Edinburgh

After about four years of 'Lets go to Edinburgh' and 'We still haven't been to Edinburgh,' we finally went to Edinburgh. It is a beautiful city, with so much to do. It's also really compact, and you can walk anywhere so don't have to worry about buses and taxis, which is great. We went on Burns Night, so there was a great atmosphere and everyone was really friendly but unfortunately, it was also absolutely freezing, and rained constantly. If you do go, make sure you bring a coat with a hood- my umbrella couldn't handle the wind as well as the rain...

We decided to visit the castle on the Sunday morning- possibly the coldest, wettest and windiest Sunday morning in the history of time. At one point the wind was pushing me over. Anyway, we persevered, and despite gale force winds and a torrential downpour, it was well worth a visit. Although in many parts we couldn't take photos, we saw the Scottish Crown jewels, the old prison, the Great Hall, and the Scottish National War Memorial.

We visited The Elephant House for lunch, which is a lovely little tea shop, decked out with elephant figurines, pictures and books, and clearly full of tourists, wanting to visit the place where J K Rowling wrote Harry Potter. There is supposedly a beautiful view of the castle, although the windows were fogged up from the rain, so we took their word for it. And not that I normally take my camera into the toilets, but the walls and ceiling were covered in graffiti, of Harry Potter quotes, declarations of love for the characters and letters to J K Rowling.

The weather picked up and we wandered around Princes Street gardens near the castle and just as we were leaving we saw this bagpipe player, doing a sterling job...