I forgot to turn my phone off last night and unfortunately, the NZ Blood Service decided to ring at 4.30am our time. I have to admit that my one word replies were a little less than polite! Oops - I'll try to restore the relationship when I'm back in NZ time :)

A little later on, we went to visit Edinburgh castle. The queues were fairly long to get tickets, but they moved quickly and a chat with a friendly American helped pass the time. We entered the castle in time to see the one o'clock gun being fired. Despite knowing what was going to happen most people still got a fright!

We joined a guided tour with an introverted guide who took us up to the top and pointed out the attractions along the way. He was really funny but looked at his shoes the whole time. The castle has lots and lots of museums of all sorts of things and we were museum-ed out by the end of the day. Some of the highlights were the Scottish honours including the crown, sceptre and stone of destiny (which we learnt about yesterday) and the atmospheric prisoners of war museum (the museum was atmospheric - not the prisoners of war).

On our way along the Royal Mile, we detoured to the Scottish bank which had a boring exhibit that included a stand with £1,000,000. Yawn. I'm Zimbabwean and have $50 billion in my wallet.

Our final stop of the day was the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the monarchy's official residence in Scotland. It was closed but we weren't going to pay to get in anyway, so we just took a few photos through the fence. Next door was the brand new architecturally challenged Scottish parliament building whose construction was also over time and over budget.

- Brett