Ambitious plans for today, up to the castle then out to the HMS Britannia and maybe the Scottish National Museum, then back in time for dinner reservations and off to see the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Chorus at Usher Hall. Funny how reality changes those plans.
I started the day with a workout at the gym attached to the hotel. I got the impression the treadmills were not used to someone of my size. The first treadmill worked fine until about the 19 minute mark and then started having trouble. So I got on the one next to it and I swear it groaned, I looked over and the other treadmills were doing their best to ignore me. I forced this one to go another 11 minutes until it started having problems. Treadmills in the US are made of sterner stuff to handle us overweight Americans.
After breakfast we decided the plan would be to take a taxi up to the castle, spend a couple hours, catch a tour bus to take us to the HMS Britannia, then get back in time for the Scottish National Museum. Taking the taxi to the castle was probably one of the best decisions we ever made on our trips to Europe. The driver was able to get us up to the castle gates which saved Robyn quite a bit of walking up hill. When we got out of the taxi the rain had picked up, the wind had increased, it was cold and miserable.

The guards had to be cold and miserable but they did not show it. Walking into the castle everything was uphill on cobblestone paths that were slick, so the going was slow. Also as you enter the main gate their is a statue of William Wallace, Mel Gibson played him in the movie Braveheart. The real William Wallace was nothing like the portrayal by Mel Gibson.

Edinburgh Castle sits on Castle Rock which is the remains of an extinct volcano, hence why it is the highest point of the city. There has been a castle present on the rock since at least the 12th century however the majority of the buildings within the castle were built after the Lang Siege in the 16th century when most of the medieval defenses were destroyed. Much of the castle to be seen is outside (great), but the Scottish Crown Jewels were inside and the royal apartments can be toured. All I really cared about was seeing where Mary Queen of Scots lived. I would have gone into more about Mary if we had been able to visit Holyrood Palace since that was where she spent most of her time as Queen of Scotland. But she was at the castle to give birth to her only child James VI of Scotland in 1566 who was to become James I of England. The room she gave birth in was incredibly small it is hard to tell in the picture but it is the size of a large closet.

The other most interesting thing to see was the siege gun called Meg Mons, this was the largest siege gun used in British Isles during the middle ages. It weighed 6 tons and took days to get in position, the purpose was to smash apart the walls of castles being sieged. It really was not very effective because it could fire so few shots in a day due to the amount of heat that was generated each time it was fired. It is one of the largest guns by caliber ever made. It eventually was only used to fire ceremonial shots, but the last one was in 1680, too much powder was used and the barrel cracked.

We also saw the Great Hall, which was impressive, and the Crown Jewels which were not. After 5 hours of freezing in the wind and drizzle we decided to leave. We also realized we did not have the time to go the HMS Britannia or the Scottish National Museum, this meant that we had bought three tour tickets and used one, and bought a 48 hour tour bus ticket and used it once.
We had one last thing to do today and that was the concert by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Chorus performing Beethoven's 9th symphony also know as Ode to Joy. Robyn had made reservations at an Italian restaurant near our hotel called Bar Italia. It was really good and authentic, the pasta I had was fantastic. The RSNO is a very excellent orchestra, when they performed the 9th it was the whole thing all 65 minutes with the chorus and soloists. This was also performed in German so no "Joyful, joyful we adore thee" but instead "Freude, Freude schoner Gotterfunken."

When we got back to the hotel we made our new train arrangements for June 3rd. It is a real pain in the ass to get by train from Florence to Lyon, it will take us almost 12 hours. We go from Florence to Milan, change trains and go to Lausanne Switzerland, change trains and go to Dijon France, change trains one more time to get to Lyon. We have left our original travel in place in case we find out there will be no strike. I will go ahead cancel those by June 2nd if it appears the strike will happen, I should get a complete refund for the train and airfare which will offset the cost of the new tickets. Tomorrow is a travel day, we are flying back to London and staying at the airport because we have a 6:50 am flight on Sunday.