After today I have a real urge to watch Braveheart again. We went to Edinburgh Castle this morning after a quick tour around the new city which is a Georgian city. We saw the house of the man who invented antiseptic surgery, where Robert Louis Stevenson was raised and the island he used as inspiration for Treasure Island. We also where told about the story of Deacon Brodie, the man who inspired the story of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. We passed the first ministers (essentially the prime minister) house and the school that inspired J.K Rowling's (she is a native) Hogwarts. When we where in Edinburgh Castle we saw lots of cool stuff, statues of Robert the Bruce and William Wallace (the picture included). The place where they do the military tattoo which they where dismantling wasn't as flat or big as I thought it was. We moved on to the main square of the castle where all the main buildings are stationed. We first went in and saw the crown jewels of Scotland exhibition which was very interesting and the piece de resistance was the actually crown jewels on display. We sadly were not allowed to take pictures in here, but that were very sparkly and very regal. We next went into the great hall whose roof is the upside down hull of a ship and the walls are covered in weapons. We then left the square to go and see St Margarets Chapel which is tiny as in her time St Margaret (or queen Margaret) was the only catholic in the kingdom so she had a chapel built for herself which only seats 18 people. We then wet and did the prisoner of war exhibit they have at the castle which was good, they had restored the rooms to there original state and had kept some if the original artifacts in the accompanying museum like doors with carvings on them etc. We then went down into the valley and saw Holyrood Palace, the official crown resident of Scotland. We only saw the outside and it looks very palacey. At this point I'm going to tell you a story of Bobby the Scottish Terrier. One day Bobby's owner, Jock, was retired from his post as a shepherd shortly before his 90th birthday. Now Jock was moved down to Edinburgh 25 miles away from the farm to try and eek out a living to survive and one day Jock noticed a tugging at his leg, just before he was about to strike out in anger (he was an angry old man) he looked and saw Bobby one of his faithful sheepdogs from the farm who had made his way 25 miles to the big city to find his master. So Jock was delighted to see his old friend and they whooped it up for 6 months until Jock passed away. There was only one thing in his funeral procession and that was Bobby. Jock was buried in greyfriars church cemetery and on the first night Bobby curled up and slept on his masters grave. In fact Bobby did this for the next 14 years, every night he would get into the cemetery and sleep on his masters grave. The church wasn't overly happy about this "lesser" creature on there sacred ground and planned to have the dog put down after about 3 years. The public got wind of this and everyone in Edinburgh signed a petition and put it to the council to stop this. Now since all of the council had signed the petition they had to think of a way to make Bobby untouchable. It took about an hour but they ended up decreeing the dog untouchable to everyone by giving him some sort of honour that humans rarely get. So Bobby continued about the city doing his thing and sleeping on the grave until his death where he was buried right next to his master. A statue was erected of this dog outside the cemetery which is only 18 inches high, but it is very cool knowing the story. That's a faithful hound. After a quick stop back at the hotel we went to see the royal yacht "Brittania". She has been decommissioned so we where able to walk all over the yacht and see all the royal rooms and staff rooms. The royal section isn't as opulent as you think it would be, it is understated quality that is the theme. The yacht had done over a million miles by the time it was decommissioned in 1997 (it was commissioned in 1953) and had been visited by more people than you could poke a stick at. For the staff it was a hard life, for instance they had to scrub the deck with seawater in complete silence before 8am and if they saw a member of the royal family the had to stand completely still and stare straight ahead until they where out of sight. It was a great experience. We are off to Leeds tomorrow for our last full day on tour. Have had fun but can't wait to be on our own schedule again.

Alex