On Tuesday, we traveled by train to North Berwick, a seaside town about 25 minutes east of Edinburgh. The boys enjoyed the train ride, and we immediately headed for "The Law," a large volcanic hill east of town. You can see it from Edinburgh and we had never climbed it before, despite numerous visits to North Berwick. It was a rigorous but short climb, one that took about a half an hour. The weather was perfect, mostly sunny but brisk and the view was beautiful. We met some very nice people from Glasgow at the top (along with their collie, Sasha). [View Full Entry]

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Almost every year we go to Frankenstein's Pub. It is an old Gothic church turned into a restaurant based on Frankenstein's monster. They usually show some short movies, but this time they didn't. They brought the Frankenstein's monster down from the ceiling. It was exactly like the movies. He was lowered down from the ceiling, slowly sat up and then looked to one side, then slowly lay back down. It was realy cool! [View Full Entry]

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Enjoy a short video of some Highland Dancers performing at the Royal Museum of Scotland. [View Full Entry]

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The boys and I went in search of Craigmillar Castle's ruins (off the main tourist path, but only a short bus ride from the city center). This castle's L-shaped tower dates from 1374, and in 1427 its defenses were strengthened with the curtain wall you see in the photo. It has corner towers, gunports, projecting parapets, walls up to 13 ft thick in certain places, a courtyard and gardens. It is remarkably well preserved and therefore it's easy to imagine how hard daily life must have been-- and these are the wealthy folks! It was the most strongly fortified castle outside [View Full Entry]

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The last few days we have been taking some nice walks around Edinburgh and nearby towns. The Union Canal runs very near by our flat, and there is a lovely canal towpath along it. The Union Canal runs all the way to Falkirk (about 30 miles), and is one of the waterways served by the Falkirk Wheel (http://www.thefalkirkwheel.co.uk/about/index.html). We rented some bikes for the children and took a trip down the canal path to the Waters of Leith, which is a stream that runs into the Firth of Forth. We also took a much longer than planned walk north of Edinburgh. [View Full Entry]

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Since arriving in Edinburgh, we have done several of the things we like to do here, such as: (1) go to Princes Street Gardens, the large park in the center of town, where the boys kick the ball around with natives & tourists alike; (2) tour Edinburgh Castle & its grounds; and (3) take the kids golfing at the Hermitage golf course. The Hermitage is a neat course, just for kids. It consists of 12 par three holes. It is inexpensive and offers lessons, is usually fairly empty, and there are none of the rules or pressure you find on busier [View Full Entry]

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After we got our tickets the first thing we did was go to the museum. There were lots of trophies in the museum. We looked in the museum for about 15 minutes then it was time for the tour. During the tour we saw the players’ lounge, and the field. We got to sit in the home team’s dugout. We also saw the room where the players change into their uniforms. All their jerseys were hanging on hangers in the room. At the end of the tour we went into the official ManU megastore, which is the largest store in the [View Full Entry]

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One thing I like about Edinburgh is that there is lots of cool cars like these every time we come here. We see lots of them and I like to take pictures of them. We were walking to our apartment from the hermitage golf course when I took the pictures. There was this lotus that was like green and was really loud, but it was driving and i didn't have time to take a picture. [View Full Entry]

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Well, we have made it to Edinburgh, Scotland. We left Austin on Thursday, June 26, around 2:30 p.m. for Chicago. After scrambling to make our connection in Chicago (for Manchester), we sat in the plane on the ground for a couple of hours, after which we had a pretty pleasant, uneventful flight to Manchester. It was our first flight on British Midland, and we have all decided we like this airline. Some of us like them because the televisions in every seatback have built-in GameBoys. Most of us like them because they had a lot of empty seats and we were [View Full Entry]

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