Edinburgh - Days 024 & 025

I woke up early and just wandered the city. I walked around the castle. It's hard to get a good look at it up close. Due to its elevation on a cliff and the massive size of the whole thing, you really have to be far away to get a good look at it. I was looking at a lot of the paintings that a lot of the street vendors sell and it is usually of the city seen from a hill at a distance with the castle being the focus.

I found a place with free Wifi (before I realized there was one right in my hostel) and updated the blog and made some plans for the days ahead.

Here (from the spot that I took this picture) you can watch the trains coming and going from the Waverly Train Station, you can watch the double-stack buses drive across the long North Bridge, and you can see the castle in the far distance where the skyline slopes downward.

On Tuesday I took a walking tour. We learned a lot about Scotland's history. We heard some of the brighter stories of Scotland and some of the darker ones, too.  One story is about a dog now known as Greyfriar's Bobby.  Bobby, a Skye Terrier, belonged to a night watchman named John Gray.  After two years together, John died.  For the next 14 years, Bobby guarded John's grave day and night.  Bobby has his own tombstone now and it, along with John Gray's, is one of the most visited tombstones in Edinburgh.