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We spent the day today walking through Edinburgh and visiting as many nooks and crannies of the city as we could. Suffice to say, the city is absolutely gorgeous and we have added it to the list of places we wish we could live in. We tried to get a sense for the city as a whole by walking through the New town and Old Town, both with very different architecture. The old part of Edinburgh was the original area which existed during the middle ages, so it has typical medieval achitecture. It includes the Royal Mile, which we spent lots of time walking up and down (it runs from the Edinburgh Castle to the Palace of Hollyrood- the Queen's current home in Scotland and the previous home of Mary, Queen of Scots. We didn't have enough time to see this, but we know we'll be back again one day!) The New Town was developed in the 1700s due to the overcrowding of the Old Town, where all the rich people migrated over to. There you see more neo-classical and Georgian style of architecture.

After we walked around the castle and through the gardens, along the shopping area on Princes Street, we found ourselves back at Calton hill, where we took the nighttime photos yesterday (see for example ). In the sunshine, overlooking the city was breathtaking. We stopped on the hill to have some lunch (usually a loaf of bread, because it's the cheapest), and we practiced our photography skills, trying to take in the beautiful sights.

At 1pm, we listened to the gun salute and watched the time ball drop on top of the Nelson monument. This is traditionally used so that the ships can coordinate their clocks. Looking away from the city on top of the hill, there is this large extinct volcanic mountain called Arthur's Seat, which is a really distinctive feature of Edinburgh's landscape. We found out too late that we could have climbed it- we'll have to come back for that!

After spending some time on the hill, we decided to walk up the Royal Mile, starting at the palace. Across from the palace is the almost brand new Scottish Parliament bulding, and it was free to go in and have a look around, so we did. We've never been in such a new Parliament, all the ones we have in Canada are "old"--- and I say that loosely compared to all the buildings in Europe. Then we stopped in the also free National Museum of Scotland for a little while.

Finally, as we were getting tired from all our walking, we headed over to meet an old high school friend of Elysia's, Tina, for coffee. She is living in Edinburgh and it was great to catch up and see her again.

Since the pictures from today basically speak for themselves, there isn't much point in filling this blog entry with too many details!

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