May 29 - Edinburgh Scotland

Oh well we slept in a bit owing other the liquor last night, not used to that at all anymore ! But then we did get to the Scottish National Portrait Museum near St Andrews Square, a beautiful old building full of the history of Scotland told through portraits of its people through the ages...

Following our visit we had a nice picnic in St Andrews Square, in spite of the howling 20-25 mph wind, until a big black cloud blew over and started dumping a light chilly rain, so back to the apartment it was nap time anyway...

After a rest and catching up on the news of the morning from the U.S. we decided to walk to the nearest restaurant down Easter Road, which happened to be Polish, The Percy (next door to the Perseverence Bar under the same ownership). The food was great and i was surprised to go into the mens room and see the walls covered in posters for alternative kinds of music. Edinburgh is quite the mod place, its Fringe Festival is world famous and goes for weeks toward the end of the summer.

After a hearty tasty and filling dinner we took a stroll over to Leith Walk and caught the Tram up to the town center, but, since we are traveling in the morning we'll have an early wake up and decided just go back, get in and pack... as it doesn't get dark til 10pm, we have been staying up quite later here nearly midnight. So now, all packed and ready to go in the morning. Three and a half hour train from Waverly station up to Inverness tomorrow... Culloden battlefield is the big draw up there, that was in 1745 i think and it was effectively the end of the clans ruling, the Brits were in charge after that bloody afair. There was a lot of history and portraits of the Jacobites at the museum today, M spent about a hour in that section learning about Bonnie Prince Charlie and his family history. Well also near Inverness is Loch Ness, the river Ness flows from there to the sea north of Inverness, and it's a nice walkable town with a big market in the town center so looking forward to that for 3 days, then next Monday we fly across the Irish Sea to Belfast, probably in a prop plane...