Edinburgh - Friends and Sightseeing

Dear Family and Friends,

The most exciting thing on our Edinburgh stop was meeting up with our friends. Many of you Cuenca folks know Karen and Larry Schunk.  They moved back to Iowa from Cuenca a couple of years ago.  We have kept in touch with them through Facebook. When we learned they were going to be in Scotland at the same time we were, we figured out a way to meet up.

The Schunks were on their last day in Scotland before returning back to the U.S., but they made time to meet us for lunch just outside the Edinburgh castle.

I am happy to report they are doing fantastic. Believe it or not, they travel more than we do and they are still doing it all on their own (no tours or cruises). We love following the pictures they post to Facebook of their travels.

We spent lunch catching up with each other over the past two years and before we departed we made tentative plans to have a reunion two years from now somewhere in the world, maybe New Zealand.

Thank you Karen and Larry, being with you made our day.

After lunch, Chuck and I made out way to Edinburgh castle.  On the way we were amused at how clever street artists are to make money from the tourists.

This is the main gate that leads into the castle.

Edinburgh castle is an historic fortress and dominates the skyline of the city.

Here is a picture that I made when we were in Edinburgh a couple of months ago. It is not a good picture because it was made through the glass window of a tour bus, but you can get an idea of the size.

We did not have time to tour it last time, so we made sure we did it on this trip.

The complex was huge and the day was beautiful.  We enjoyed our self guided tour very much but unfortunately, I did not get many pictures.

An example of the historic homes of Edinburgh, just outside the castle.

There is a very touristic road that runs from the hilltop castle down to the Holyrood Palace that is called the Royal Mile.  Here are some tourists enjoying that street.

We connected up with our tour bus and went back to the ship.

Between the Royal Yacht, lunch with Karen and Larry, and the Edinburgh Castle it was a wonderful day.

Our next stop was the Isle of Guernsey, I will share about our visit there on the next post.

Love,
Nancy