We got up in time for breakfast today, but this time, Lyle slept through! After breakfast, we went back upstairs and got ready for the day. It was so hard not to go back to sleep!! When we were all ready, we got in the panda and drove out about 40 minutes to Stirling, where we went to Stirling castle. First thing when we got there, they charged us £4 just to park the car! There's not really any choice though, so we parked the car and headed in through the gates. We bought our tickets (£14!!) then headed in. There was a guided tour that was going just 10 minutes after we got in, so we headed straight to the meeting point for that. Our guide came up, in some pretty cool tartan pants (must have been too cold for a kilt!), and started telling us a bit about the castle. The first building we were looking at was the palace, which King James V had built. From there we walked up around to Queen Anne Gardens, which was very green and pretty, and had a great view of the surrounding area on one side and the palace on the other. Next we walked through the Great Hall, and out into the courtyard, where we had a view of the other side of the palace, and our guide was telling us abut the statues that were on the building. The one in the corner, and the most prominent position, was a statue of King James V himself, and all around it, on all sides, were statues of gods and goddesses, which was meant to show the power and fortune that his reign would bring to the kingdom and to Scotland. Next we went to the Chapel Royal, where he told us a little more about life in the castle, and the tour ended there. I don't know if we're just tour and castle snobs now, but we weren't too impressed by it all. The statues were pretty cool though I suppose. Next we went down to the cafe to grab some lunch. We got an expensive panini each and sat down to eat. This whole place is such a ripoff!!! After lunch we went through the vaults where they had lots of little exhibitions set up, mostly aimed at kids I think. One was a music room, with a couple of drums, cello and harp on the wall that you could play (that sounded really ****!). Another room was information on the jesters, another had things about all the other people that would have lived in the castle, and the last (and my favourite), was the dress up room! They had clothes that people would have worn back then, in very small kids sizes, but we still put some on. Awesome. We had a look through the palace, where they had people dressed up in the different rooms, giving a little info about each section. One of the rooms had all these carved portraits on the roof of all different royal and godly figures. There were about 20 or so of these carvings all over the roof. That looked pretty cool. Next we went into the gallery, where they had the original carvings of these figures, which was cooler. After the gallery we went down to the great kitchens, where they had a display set up of a bunch of mannequins doing the cooking and preparation. After that we were all a bit cold and ready to go. I think if this were the first castle we visited it would probably be awesome, but after a few, they all seem pretty same same, and it's gonna be hard to top the ruins of Buchanan castle from yesterday! I think I prefer ruins to done up castles... So we had a quick look through the gift shop before heading back to the car. I bought an irnbru rock. Rocks are a kind of lolly here, and they come in all sorts of flavours, and it was pretty tasty! We headed back to the panda, and went for a drive around the town, trying to find the Stirling Bridge. I was trying to look up the address, but the Internet was being ******, so we ended up driving in circles for a while! We ended up finding it, and went for a walk across it. It's the bridge that William Wallace's army defeated the English Army which was about twice their size. They snuck out in the night, to loosen the foundations of the bridge, and when half the English Army was on the bridge crossing over to fight, the bridge collapsed! Pretty clever! After that, we drove back to Balloch, and went to watch some TV for a bit, ordered some pizza, and spent a quiet night in the B&B.