from Edinburgh to Liverpool

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Wed May 14

Well we decided at the last minute to stay an extra half day in Edinburgh to check out a few more of the sights. Since the UK is best known for its castles, it made sense to check out one of the oldest, Edinburgh Castle, which is still an active military installation however its mostly a historical monument with museums that pay tribute to the Scottish military and lineage of the scottish royal family. Its here that the original Scottish royal crown jewels are stored under lock and key but on display to the public (unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures of them). Also this spot is a great locale for panoramic pictures of the city. The castle is located at the top of the royal mile which was the main street of "Auld" Edinburgh. Later on in the day we followed the royal mile down to the lower part of the city and took part in a different kind of tour. Apparently the city sits on top of another "underground" city which was used to house the homeless many centuries ago and is rumoured to be haunted. The tour was called the "Auld Reekies" underground city tour and if you have ever seen any of those haunted castle shows on tv this is pretty much just like it. Our tour guide took us into one particular vault where there was a "trapped spirit" inside this circle of stones, then proceeded to invite anyone to stand in the centre and see if they feel any different. One person felt warm, one felt cold ... D'Arcy felt nothing, trying to tell us something honey??? LOL

Later that afternoon we made a last minute change of plan and instead of travelling to Manchester we went further on to Liverpool, the reason being there was a big UEFA cup soccer match featuring a team from Glasgow playing a team from Russia so Manchester was going to be quite overrun with football fans and no chance of actually getting into the game anyways. This turned out to be a good move as Liverpool is a great city with lots of musical history ... and apparently lots of nightlife. We snapped a few pics of the more interesting looking places ... and one particular club at the end that a few people might recognize the name from which we totally stumbled upon by accident. The highlight of the night in my opinion. Tomorrow we will check out some history on the Beatles and then make our way to London! See you on the flip side!

D'Arcy and Ivan

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