My great-great-great-great-great x 15 cousin... o something

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Our first Hearty Scottish Breakfast, and of course Justin tried the Haggis. I had a bite, it was okay but a bit greasy. Must have been due to all the brains and eyeballs and whatever they stuff inside the sheeps stomach. But the ham, egges, mushrooms, beans, toast, juice, cereal, etc were all very good.

Carruthertown Hotel was very nice, and the owners extremely friendly and willing to help. The room was small, but so are all rooms in the UK.

We took a drive out to Comlongon Castle, and they allowed us a tour. We'd gone he night before, but a wedding was in progress. Ths morning, the last of the mercedez, bmw's and ferrari's was just pulling out, so we got the all clear. It's a cool castle, and we saw where the maid Miriam Carruthers fell (jumped/pushed) to her death lo these many years ago. It is said she still haunts the grounds, and they even have a room named after her, and the castle is ranked in the 10 Most Haunted Castles of the World list. Alas, we saw nothing of her ghost.

Next we stopped at the Mouswald Parish Church and walked among the gravestones. All where from the last couple hundred years, but I'd read online that there was a tomb of Sir Simon Carruthers there. We found it, bu it was unmarked. It just had a cover of him in repose (lying on the casket/seplechur thing (I'll have Justin fix my spelling later). Anyway< it was pretty interesting and we took some nice video. I couldn't find any more info on the family name, but maybe some day we'll link Carrithers back a little farther to Sir Simon's time.

Next we drove about 7 miles out to Caerlaverock Castle. We spend a few hours there, itwas pretty neat. Old, old, old. Then we were off toward Edinburgh, with a stop at Rosslyn Chapel.

We just made it to the chapel before it closed, and took a 45 minute quick tour. These days you can spend hours and hours hearing about every nook and cranny - especially since the book DaVinci Code came out, but for us itwas enough time. It was very interesting.

The drive to Edinburgh was okay (stay on the left...stay on the left...) but we couldn't find the University Dorms we were staying at until we finally asked a taxi driver to let us follow him there. He did - as extremely nice about it, and refused any payment, even tho it took him out of his way.

For 2 nights we'll stay in the dorms. We can do our laundry here, and it's pretty nice.

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