The First Adventure

Greetings from Edinburgh!

I figured out dial-up, so I hope it keeps working! We're going to look for a local wi-fi spot, too, since the hotel charges an outrageous amount for it. When I get broadband access I'll upload pictures.

So far it's been cold and rainy. Yesterday we were pretty tired from the trip and took it easy. We walked around for a bit in the rain, but then came back to the hotel and ate. Then we all went to bed and slept - getting over the jetlag isn't the best fun ever, but I'm glad we got here early to adjust.

Today we ate the breakfast at the hotel which was pretty good - eggs, bacon, sausage, croissants, granola, fruit, and other things. Then, we went exploring a bit around the area to find a bus information place where we found the bus line to Rosslyn and bought a day pass. Then we walked around Princes Street, took copious amounts of pictures of the castle, and then hopped on a bus to Rosslyn chapel!

Rosslyn was incredible! This is the church made famous in The DaVinci Code as the place in the end where the "holy grail" was found. In reality, it was an incredible piece of architecture that featured innumerable amounts of different carvings and lots of Templar Knights history.

Unfortunately, you couldn't take pictures on the inside of the chapel, but I could have taken 1000 pictures in there, so it's probably for the better of everyone that they don't allow it.

The chapel was constructed by some freemasons, and it's rumored that the templars used it as a base since scotland was one of the only places tolerant of the templars.

One of the coolest things was this one carving around a window of some corn (or at least it looked VERY much like corn) The carving was from the 1300s, which is well before corn was ever known to Europe when Columbus made it to America in 1492). Did the templar knights make it to America first? Who knows?

There were knights buried in the chapel as well. One (the founder of the church - St. Clair) was said to have died carrying the heart of Robert the Bruce to Jerusalem. Robert the Bruce was the leader of Scotland who betrayed William Wallace but became a good guy in the end. Pretty cool!

After this we walked down to the remnants of Rosslyn castle, which was mostly just chunks of the outer walls and overall kind of disappointing. We then went to a local pub and ate some lunch. Erin ordered haggis to get a taste of the culture, and I had a small taste of the culture by trying a bite. It tasted kind of like seasoned ground beef, but it was just gut wrenching thinking about what I was eating (chopped up sheep liver, lung, and heart stuffed in a sheep's stomach). It really didn't taste that bad, though!

Then, we rode the bus back to town and walked back to the hotel. It started raining on top of being cold and windy, so we all ended up hanging around and didn't head out again tonight. I took a nap that was too long, but hopefully it will do me good getting over the jet lag. The weather looks like it will be pleasant the next couple of days, so hopefully we'll have a couple of full days ahead!

That's about all I've got. I'm going to sign off for now and watch some British comedy on the tele. Oh those Brits!

Signing off from Auld Reekie.

Ryan