On Tuesday Amy went shopping with our cousin Beth and Alex did his own thing. Dad and I wanted to go and find the cemetary where his parents are burried. He had the address and some directions. We left the flat and took the bus down to waverly bridge and decided to go and have lunch at Prince's mall. We got backed potatoes with tunafish in them. It was weird but not bad. I think I might actually try it again sometime.





The picture above is one of a few signs that are in the mall. I'm pretty sure the natives were laughing at me as I took pictures of the funny signs. I'm such a tourist!!





We got the bus to the cemetary, dad was wrong about where the bus stop was to get off so we had a nice walk to find it, the people at the cemetary were able to print off a map to show us where the plot was. We found it and took some pictures. The above picture is of the gravestone.







This is me with the gravestone. It was neat to go and see that. It gives me more of a connection to my grandparents. I met my granny a few times as a small child but grandpa passed away before my parents even met. So it was neat to be able to go and see that. It started raining a bit while we were there so we waited under a tree for a bit until it slowed down.





As we were walking back to the bus stop we were walking through these trees. Everything is green, they get so much rain that the trees have LOTS of moss on them which gives them this green tint. It's actually pretty cool.





We took the bus for a little ways and then dad decided we should get off and go for a walk. We walked over to this road where we had a really good view of Arthur's Seat and the craigs alongside it. Dad took this picture of me with Arthur's Seat in the background. We walked along this little ridge across the street from Arthur's Seat. Dad pointed out in the distant the school that my grandpa was a janitor at for many years. We actually walked over to it and down the street and dad showed me where he lived as a little boy when his dad was the Janitor. He showed me some other streets and stuff. It started raining again and we ducked into a little close (alley) for cover. After a bit we started walking again. We came across a police station and dad wanted to ask a question so we went in and did that. We caught the bus back to the flat and got ready for dinner at Trish's.







This is a picture of the school that grandpa worked at in the distantance.







Trish invited us over for Tea(supper) so we went over there and visited and had dinner of yummy lasagna. After dinner it was decided that we would go on a walk to Cramond and to see the ponies(a little pony farm). The picture above is by the water in Cramond. I just thought it was really pretty.





One of my ancestors on my mom's side was the tollkeeper for Cramond Brig Toll many years ago so I had to take a picture. It was neat to be able to put a place to a name. I'm so excited about Family History now.







This is me with the Cramond Brig Toll behind me.





This is the street that the used to live on.



This is dad watching everyone playing at the park before we went back to Trish's.



This is Alex and Sarah playing on this funky swing thing that you stand up on and make it go around in circles. It was hillarious to watch.





This is Amy, Beth and Sarah on this cool bowl swing. Alex was pushing them. It was crazy I was almost expecting them to fall out. After the park we went back to Trish's for desert of ice cream and fruit. It was a lovely day and evening.



On Wednesday Sarah had to work in the morning and we arranged to meet on the Royal Mile after lunch so we could go to Edinburgh Castle. Dad, Amy, Alex, Sarah, Beth and I as well as Sarah's former roommat Jessica and Jessica's daughter met us there as well. The picture above is when we were walking up the castle esplanade. Most of us had the Historic pass so we didn't have to wait in line. We had to wait for those that did have to pay though. We looked at the view and stuff while we waited.


This is the view from the castle.



and another view from the castle

How many girls can you get on a cannon? well in this case you can get Sarah, Jessica, C, Beth, Amy and Becky!!



this is the one o clock gun. They actually fire this gun every day at one o clock.
\ There are these little holes in the wall i think maybe where they would shoot guns/cannons from and we all decided it would be fun to sit in them and take pictures.

Scotland 2009 Part Two

So here is another long post about my awesome trip. Below are a few more pictures of our trip to Stirling Castle on the first Saturday we were here.


The picture above is of I believe the Great Hall in Stirling Castle they still use it for parties to this day.


The picture above is of the courtyard at Stirling Castle.


This one is a view of Wallace Monument from the Wall around Stirling Castle




This Tapestry had a role in the movie Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.


After the Castle on the drive back to Edinburgh we stopped and saw the Robert The Bruce statue, there are two of these statues in the world, one here and one in Calgary by SAIT now I have a picture taken with both.

We went back to Edinburgh. Sarah took dad, Amy and Alex too see the flat that she was living in, there wasn't room in her car so I stayed at James' flat and wrote in my journal and watched t.v. After we had dinner Sarah, Amy, Beth and I went and saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. It was the 2nd time most of us had seen it. We had a fun little girls evening. Sunday dad and I went to church with James and Beth and Sarah met us there for Sacrament meeting. Sunday evening everyone came over to James' flat for Sunday Tea (which is what they call supper) Everyone was there except for Iain. After dinner all the men went bowling for James's stag night. Us girls went over to Trish's house and spent the evening visiting and hanging out it was lots of fun.


On Monday Alex, dad and Amy decided that they wanted to go to the Hearts store (football team) and a motorcycle store. That doesn't interest me at all so I did the touritsy thing and took the bus down to Waverly Bridge and got a ticket for the bus tours that you can take around Edinburgh. I got the one that lets me go on any of the tours for a 24 hour period. The picture above is of Princes Street mall.


This is a view of New Register House from the bus tour. Auntie Trish works here I believe.

This is a view of some buildings from the bus.


This is the Scottish Parliment Building. The design has to do with there open door policy, hence why you can see in the windows. It looks cool.


This is the Queens gallery at Holyrood house palace.



This is the Abbey at Holyrood house palace. I was so excited to come here. I had read about it online and really wanted to come. The palace is where the Queen stays when she comes to Edinburgh. There is also a lot of history to do with Mary Queen of Scotts. I got to the Palace just a few minutes before a guide was going to do a tour of the Abbey ruins so I was able to do that. It was really neat to see the ruins and here him explain about all the things that happened here. With my admission to the palace you get an audio guide to use for your tour so it was cool to listen and go through all the rooms in the palace. Your not allowed to take pictures inside the palace because it's a residence of the Queen. It's beautiful inside. I did buy the guidebook which has pictures and talks about everything.


This is me standing inside the Abbey.

This is Holyrood House Palace

Me in front of the fountain at Holyrood House Palace

After lunch at the palace I got back on a tour bus and continued around Edinburgh and saw lots of other neat buildings. Above is Grassmarket

This is a picture of Arthur's seat. It looks like the head of a lion. It's magnificent to look at. I kind of wish I could have climbed it but I didn't!


This is just one of many neat buildings around Edinburgh. I love that everything is made of Stone and is so old.


This is a private school that J.K. Rowling modeled hogwarts after in the Harry Potter books

This is St. Andrews Square it always looked busy. It would be a nice place to sit and read a book.

I took another bus tour out to Leith to Ocean Terminal it's a mall and also has the Royal Yacht Britannia docked there. It's now a museum. This is a picture of it. I didn't do the tour. It was already late in the day. I did a little shopping and then headed back into Edinburgh.


This is a funny sign that I saw on the way back from Leith. Definitly wouldn't get my hair cut at this place!

There is a skeleton in the window of this flat. Don't know why but it's funny!

This is one of the observatories in Edinburgh. Dad used to work at one when he lived here.

This is a view of Waverley Station and some I believe Parliment buildings in the background.

This is the Scott Monument on Princes Street. If you climb it you get a certificate. I didn't climb it. But thought it looked cool. I wandered along Princes Street and did some shopping. Got some souveniers and gifts for people. Including at Marks and Spencers. Got to get Battenburg! After that I headed back to the flat and ran into dad and Amy when I got off the bus. We went to the little Chinese restaurant by the bus stop and got dinner and then went back to the flat.

Scotland 2009 Part one

So the next couple of posts are going to be pretty long. I'm going to use the blog as a bit of a journal for my trip to Scotland/Ireland in August. Don't worry I'm putting pictures in too!

At the end of July I had the wonderful opportunity to visit Scotland and Ireland with my dad, brother Alex and sister Amy. We were scheduled to fly out of Calgary at 8:20 July 29th so we made sure that we were at the airport by 4 to check in etc. As we were waiting in line we found out that the flight was delayed by 17 hours something about a fan blade malfunctioning.

This is my sad fast picture that we had to wait until the 30th to fly out. Amy and I both took them.

Thsi is dad and I on the airplane finally! We flew out of Calgary on Air Transat/ Thomas Cook at about 3:30pm on the 30th. It was an okay flight. I sat with dad and Alex and Amy sat together. We all took turns with the window seat so we could take pictures. I read, listened to music and watched t.v. on the seatback t.v.'s. They were really cool they also had a feature that showed where we started from on a map and where we were going, you could see exactly where we were at the time and the altitude, temp outside etc.

This is a sign at the Glasgow Airport. We finally landed at 5:40am and sat on the Tarcmac for about 40 minutes waiting for a gate to be available. Apparently the airport wasn't ready for us since our flight had been due to arrive the previous day. We got through customs, got our luggage etc. and made it out and found Uncle James and Sarah who were there to pick us up. Sarah had to work so we hurried out. Sarah and Amy went in Sarah's car with most of the luggage while Dad, Alex and I went in James' Jag! We made it to James' flat and unpacked and showered. Sarah gave us orders that we were to meet her at her work for lunch. Auntie Trish came over to say hi and then we figured out where to go to catch the bus. We were lucky the bus by James' flat the 41 is extremely handy. It took us right to Sarah's work and right into town to Waverly bridge and pretty much anywhere we wanted to go. We made it to Sarah's work and went to the pub next door for a pub lunch. After lunch dad, Alex and Amy and I went for a walk to kill time for awhile. We saw a lot of neat things like Greyfriars Bobby statue, The elephant House where J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book. We walked down the mound and along the park on Princes Street below the Castle. We did a little shopping and then headed back to the Flat. Beth, Sam, Tom and John came over for Fish supper. It was really greasy but yummy. The Fish and Chips come's wrapped in brown paper. I managed to stay up until 8 and then crashed. Amy and I shared a room, dad had Uncle James' room and Alex was in the living room.

This is a picture of a double decker bus and it's actually the 41 that we took a lot while we were there.

This is the Elephant House where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter

This is me at the bottom of the Mound with the Castle in the background

This is Cramond, the first night we were there James took Amy, dad and I down there before we had our Fish Supper to see what it looks like. It's the cutest little fishing village and it's not far from James's flat.

On the Saturday Sarah came over and we took a mini road trip out to see a couple of Castles. Sarah was going to borrow a friends car that was bigger than hers but wasn't able to. James had put dad on his insurance so he could drive the car if he needed to. Before we left James gave dad a crash course in driving his Jag and let him practice driving on the wrong side of the road. So dad drove the JAg and Sarah navigated. Our first stop was Doune Castle (above) Monty Python and the Holy Grail was partly filmed here.

This is me inside Doune castle. I took so many pictures. It was really neat to wander around and look at all the rooms. The stairways up to the top are crazy, they are so windy and not very wide. I'm a bit of a klutz so it was interesting.

After Doune Castle we went to The Wallace Monument. You park at the bottom and then you can either walk (hike) to the monument or ride a bus. We all walked up. The picture above is a shot of the monument as I was walking up.

This is me in front of Wallace Monument. We decided that we didn't want to climb to the top of it. There's something like 300 steps up to the top.

After the monument we drove around Stirling so Sarah could show us the University and some of the places that she had lived in when she was in Stirling. We also stopped at Tesco's and got sandwhiches for lunch and yummy Orange Fanta to drink (at least I did) After that we drove to Stirling Castle ( we actually ate lunch at the Castle) The picture above is of Stirling Castle. I think it was definitly one of my favourites. In a lot of the rooms in Stirling Castle they actually have little displays of statues and things to show what the Castle would have looked like many years ago.

The picture above is of me pretending to chop wood in Stirling Castle. Sarah knows where all the motion sensors are and what you can get away with touching so that made taking pictures all the more fun. Sarah was an awesome tour guide.