Edinburgh, Scotland

First and foremost, I want to wish my mom a happy birthday!!  Hope you had a great day!

Banana cupcake from Sprinkles to celebrate...YUM!

Now, back to my travels...as you know from reading this post, my friend, Mary, and I spent Labor Day Weekend 2009 exploring Dublin and Edinburgh. We covered Dublin first so I left off just as we arrived to Edinburgh...

We arrived to Edinburgh in the evening.  We were pretty tired from a long day touring the Irish countryside so we quickly found our hostel - the Royal Mile Backpackers - and crashed for the night.

Early the next morning, we were off on a heart of Scotland tour.  We saw so much gorgeous scenery!  We stopped for lunch at a beach, saw a field full of hamish, viewed the William Wallace monument from afar, roamed around the pitlochery dam, and even took a brief nature hike.  So much variety and beauty!!

We also stopped midday for some fun at Loch Ness.  Mary and I paid a little extra to go out on a boat cruise.  We befriended the captain and heard lots of fun stories about Nessie sightings!

That evening we went on a ghost tour around Edinburgh.  It was impromptu, but very fun!  Toward the end, we were even able to catch some of the fireworks from a nearby celebration/festival. 

The next day we toured the Royal Mile.  We hit the highlights, but also stopped in so many little shops along the way.  I even bought a bengal striped bracelet that I still wear to cheer on my Bengals during football season.  We had a lot of fun just roaming around the area all day!

We spent a fair amount of time at Edinburgh Castle.  There was SO much to see there!  We also managed to take a look around Deacon Brodie's Pub, St. Giles Cathedral, and a couple of museums - The People's Story and the Writer's Museum.  Both were unique and interesting though we didn't spend too much time in either one.  We also checked out the Heart of the Midlothian...and I most definitely spit on it for good luck :)

The last place we visited before heading off to the airport was the Holyrood Palace.  We spent a good amount of time here as well, but could have easily spent more time looking around. 

We had a plane to catch though!

We headed back to Dublin that evening to spend the night in the airport before an early morning flight back to NYC!!

It was quite an adventure, but one I will treasure forever!  Such a fun time with a great friend :)

Have you been to Scotland?  What area did you enjoy most?

Linking up with Helene today!

Andrea :)