Edinburgh reminded me of Seattle, the weather, the outdoorsy orientation of the people and the city. It's a college town, so lots of small coffee shops, etc. You can walk most of central Edinburgh easily.

First, we saw the old castle. It has through several wars and has remodels to prove it. It also is the site where the Scottish Crown Jewels are held, and we saw them on display. There also were several small museums about the regiments associated with the Castle's defense. If you've ever seen the Edinburgh Millitary Tatoo then you've seen this castle, it's the venue for this annual event.

Next, went through a building that's been restored to show the various periods of it's expansion. It's on the street between the Old Castle and Holyrood Castle. It was quite interesting, and fairly dramatically demonstrated the changes in the quality of life over the past 300 years.

We also saw the Scottish National Gallery. It's a good collection that has a nice cross section of works. One thing we noticed were studies by Seurat for a painting that we later saw in the English National Gallery in London.

One highlight of the trip was visiting Dave Allen, and his family. It's really fun to be a tourist, but living in a different country is a challenge, even if you more or less speak the same language. We had dinner with Dave and Kim, and saw the great house that they're living in with their kids. They'd been living in Edinburgh for over 18 months at the time.

In Edinburgh we rented a converted Mews. This was originally a stable or carriage house. It was two stories high, had two bedrooms, two baths and a full kitchen and living room upstairs. One novelty to me was the combined washer/dryer machine, which Dave Allen told me was both a good model as well as a rarity. Most folks don't have dryers, evidently.