A Weee Dram : Castles and Whiskey

That's pretty much the gist of it. Well, it's what we will remember anyway. We did A LOT yesterday. We were ready to tap out around 4ish but pushed ourselves to see one more thing, Holyrood Palace, and I'm so glad we did because it was our favorite. We set our alarms for 7am yesterday morning. We wanted to hit the ground running and really get a lot in. WHYYYYYY? What is wrong with us? I don't know why we felt like we needed to hurry up, we have 3 solid days here and from what I can see, we could've done it in 1.5. Needless to say we were exhausted. ETD of 9am, didn't actually leave until 10. I had read about this breakfast place that does a proper Scottish Breakfast with fried bread, beans, fried tomato, egg, sausage, haggis, bacon, and a hashbrown. I was dying to try a breakfast like that so I mapped it and off we went. The pics of the breakfast were amazing and gave you the impression the place was really nice and like an average sized restaurant. Well, it wasn't. It was a hole in the wall so small that Walt was convinced I was wrong. We stood out front while I checked and rechecked my info. I wasn't wrong, this was the place. The Angus Cafe, formerly known as The Angus Fling. It didn't matter that I showed him the info, he refused to order anything on the menu besides french toast and bacon. He was sketched on the place. I went ahead and went with the Scottish Breakfast. Damn! It was good. And filling. I even ate the haggis while Walt silently gagged at me. Hey, when in Rome....Some drunk chick came in and tried to get tea and water but the waiter wasn't having it. She was begging saying how dehydrated she was. Nope, get lost. Welcome to Edinburgh.

From there we headed up to the castle. I don't know what I was thinking but I guess I was figuring since this was the shoulder season it wouldn't be too crowded. Man was I wrong. The place was packed, people everywhere. I don't know what else to say other than people are freaking rude and it just made me hate humans. There was a group of Chinese people blocking everyone's view along the edge of the lookout. Each one had to individually climb up onto the ledge to get their picture taken while the group of friends stood watching and SHRIEKING laughing. I can't express that word enough, lit-e-ral-ly shrieking. At one point I had to hold myself back from not only shushing them but walking over and pushing them off the cliff. Kids were screaming, people's cell phones were going off in quiet zones and they were answering them and having conversations, people cackling and yelling in groups. Honestly, it was too much. If I was feeling this way, imagine poor Walt. He didn't complain until I called it and said let's bail. At one point we waited in line forever to see the crown jewels of Scotland. After we walked by a sword, a hat and a giant piece of concrete Walt goes, "wtf, that was it? All this time and that's IT???" That's when I said, time to go. Listen, don't get me wrong, it was cool. Way cool? Nah. Like Sao Jorge Castle Lisbon kinda cool? Not even close. We headed back down the Royal Mile aka tourist street and went to The Whiskey Experience. Now we knew, according to Rick Steves, that this place was really janky. He called it the Malt Disney experience but also said it's a great way to orient yourself to the way whiskey is made. You get into a Haunted Mansion kind of ride and go around listening to a ghost on a video screen tell you all about whiskey. It was actually really fun and a great learning experience. The best part was this scratch and sniff card they gave you that highlighted the 5 main whiskey producing regions and what their whiskey is known for...vanilla, floral, citrus, peat, or fruit. We then had a special tasting of single malts from the areas. We also learned how they blend whiskey. All in all, totally worth the money. Again, I don't like whiskey but I enjoyed learning about it. From there we did the Rick Steve's Royal Mile walk. You know how he is. He had us popping into alleys, stopping into bookshops, perusing churches. It was a great walk that took us over a mile to the bottom of yes, the Royal Mile. We were exhausted at this point. We had been on our feet since 10am and it was around 4. We ended up at the Scottish Parliament building and opted not to go in (Walt..."I'll take a pass"). Holyrood Palace is at the end of the mile and it's actually a place the royals still use. The queen stays here at least one week in summer and has huge garden parties. I wasn't sure Walt was up for it but I really wanted to do it even though I was dragging. Out of the blue Walt says, we should do this. I jumped up and down a little. I really, really wanted to see it. It was totally worth it!! Such a cool place and the audio/video guide that comes with it is brilliant. We learned so much and really enjoyed all of it including the gardens and the room where Mary Queen of Scots' husband murdered her secretary. Super cool. But man were we tired when we were done. AND we had a huge walk uphill back to our place which is near the top of the mile. We dragged our asses back home, sat on the bed for a "few minutes", which ended up being over an hour nap for Walt, then dragged ourselves back out again for dinner. We had seen this place on the way back up that had oysters and for some reason it stuck. We needed oysters. So we headed back down towards Holyrood, halfway down the mile to have a lovely seafood dinner. You could tell Walt was tired because our oysters came out before our wine and he actually flagged down the waitress and hassled her about where our wine was. Please do not make that man wait for his wine after I've made him learn historical shit all day long. I would put a laughing emoji here but I don't have one. We wanted to rally after dinner and find a bar with music or something because we're here! and it's Edinburgh! and that's what you're supposed to do! but we just couldn't do it. Alas, we're not in our 20s or even 30s anymore. We will leave that to the wee ones. Back to our suite where I put on an eye mask, put in earplugs and took an Ambien. Wow, that was a mistake. I honestly don't know what happened but I woke at 9 and was completely out of it. Walt was concerned because I couldn't even walk straight. I was walking like I was on an angle. I ended up going back to bed for another hour and was still loopy. We didn't get out of here today until noon.

Today was easy. We went to Victoria Street (so cute!!) and got a pork sandwich at Oink! I read about this place. They roast a pork every day and put it in the window. When the pork is gone, they close. The sandwich comes in three sizes..a piglet, an oink, or a grunter. They're on a delicious roll and you can have mayo and mustard or bbq sauce and cracklings too plus a bunch of other stuff. Dude, so good. The line was down the street. We shopped at a classic Scottish shop for tartan/cashmere scarves (I might have gotten a little sporan purse, stop, I know) then went to the National Museum of Scotland. This place is like the Natural History Museum plus Fleet Science Center plus the Met all rolled into one. It was huge and crazy and full of stuff. We checked out the section on the history of Scotland (saw some golf stuff) and the animal section too. And honestly, that was pretty much our day. We stopped off for a beer at the famous Deacon Brodie's Tavern. Robert Louis Stevenson modeled his character Dr. Jekkyl and Mr. Hyde off of this real live guy. He apparently was a sweetheart during the day and helped people with their homes and locks, then in the evenings went out and picked their locks and robbed them. The sign hanging at the tavern is cool too, double sided. Dinner was a 6 course tasting menu with paired alcohol, not just wine. It was really good but we were busting full. So much so, we took an uber the one mile back home because we couldn't handle the walk. Tonight is an earlyish night in and I have no clue about tomorrow. Probably more walking and seeing and learning.

***Pics are out of order and I don't even know how many are missing because %^&*ing blogger****