Edinburgh, Scotland

Like most people without children, I haven't celebrated Easter since I was a little girl chasing for eggs in the garden, but, I keep a wonderful memory of Easter day as that little girl, with the bells of the church down the road ringing continuously from 10 to 12, with a blue sky and shy sunshine wearing a little cardigan to protect from the lingering cool wind of April, and victoriously finding my first (and usually only) egg hidden behind my great-grand-mother rose bush. My brother would have found every other single eggs by the time I got to my first one.

Nowadays, Easter is the opportunity to go on a break; two years ago we went back home; last year in Prague and this year, it was the wonderful city of Edinburgh, capital of Scotland. Honestlty, wonderful seems to be the adjective always associated with this town, but it did not make my heart jump with excitement at every street corner. It was sunny yet looked grey, it was cold, it was windy and it is on a hill and requires to walk up and down and up and down and up and down so I spent most of my time looking at the pavement rather than up at the buildings.
(the steps up to the castle)

The castle was great, build over and maintained for the last 28th centuries as they discovered part of the castle dating back 8th century AD. It supposedly fires a canon at 1pm everyday to this date, but we did not have a chance of hearing it. It is still used today for official functions and has a church where names of all the Scottish soldiers who died during any wars recorded are listed in beautifully bounded folders.

(view of the momunent erected in the memory of Sir Walter Scott, poet and writer; it gives a good idea of the up and down)

(In a pub, where we tried the local dish Haggis. The other specialty of Scotland is whisky, here a window promoting Jack Daniels.)

The main attraction of Scotland is the ghost tours; that was not my cup of tea to start with and much to our disappointment we did not see any ghosts, nothing, nada, niet, rien. But it wasn't without a fright and a scream in the dark (to my surprise I realised it was my own might I add). But it was scary enough as I was busy looking over my shoulder the whole time, expecting someone in a mask to creep up behind me and scare the hell out of me.

One day, we went on a coach tour of Inverness and Scotland country side, working our way to the Loch Ness; the best bit of the day was meeting Amish a 12 year old woolly cow.


The second best bit of the trip was this castle ruin on the side of the Loch Ness, it was well pretty, but I lost Alex in the ruins (it wasn't that big though). Then we went on a boat ride on the Loch Ness, it was lovely, but again, no monster. such a shame, I was looking forward to seeing what I imagined is a gentle giant beast. Although it was all a great trip and that I would recommend to anyone, I won't be going back anytime soon.