Day Six in Edinburgh: The Firth of Forth and Holy Rood Castle

Our busiest day yet!  We punched a time clock on having a good time today.  Tendered to Edinburgh first thing this morning and first visited Edinburgh Castle, next the Royal Mile and after that, Holy Rood Castle where Mary, Queen of Scots, reigned several years before being imprisoned and then later beheaded for her alleged role in a plot to assassinate Elizabeth I (short version of a very long, miserable story).  

The first thing Doug asked me this morning is if I had on comfortable shoes.  I looked at him and said, “If your standard is that my feet won’t be bleeding by the end of the day, then yes.”  I’m not sure how anyone trails around on cobblestone streets, trudges up and down hills, slogs through castles, ruins and churches without feeling like one’s feet have turned to bloody stubs by the end of the day.  On the bright side, I met all of my Apple Watch exercise goals with ease.

We were in a tour group today, as we often do on these cruises just to make sure we see all of the sites (again, punching a time clock).  We always have “favorite” characters of the day.  Today the honors go to Mr. Photog and Miss Selfie.   Mr. Photog was an awkward, nerdy guy from somewhere in the U.S. (I’m guessing Omaha) and had two enormous cameras strapped on with a really serious back strap type contraption.  He took a zillion pictures of everything.  He even made the tender captain stop to take several pictures of seals on a buoy.  Our second contender was a woman from China.  She had extremely heavy eye makeup

and straight across heavy bangs.  Surprisingly, the rest of her hair appeared to be in longish Shirley Temple ringlets.  The entire day she held up her iPhone on a selfie stick and posed for endless selfies with historic stuff in the background.  “Here’s me in the front of the oldest church in Scotland, here’s me in front of Holy Rood, here’s me in front of everything in Edinburgh.”

Oh, yeah, the Firth of Forth.  We were either riding on a boat on it, or looking at it, or probably both several times today.