Scotland Part 3

Tuesday Chris headed out with Pascale's mother-in-law, Grandgee, father-in-law, David, and the two kids to the beach. They went to an estuary first where he learned about the wildlife and could use telescopes to zoom in.  To get there, he got to ride in a retro looking British cab.

You can ride 4 people in these cabs.  There are these cleverly hidden fold up seats that face backwards.

The name of the estuary is the Firth of Forth.  Geologically it is a fjord formed by the Forth Glacier of the last glacial period. The river Forth flows into the North Sea here.  Although it was a nice warm day, the wind and the water were a bit too cold for Chris to get in.  As you can see a few brave others seemed to not mind.

This is Bass Rock.  The reason the top of it looks white, is that it is covered in birds!  There used to be a lighthouse and garden and some people who stayed on the island.  However, they were ran off by the birds, and now it has officially been overtaken.

That evening we met back up for dinner.  We ate at the Living Room on George St in New Town.  For reference, new town construction began in 1793 =)  There are still a lot of old school phone booths in Scotland, and they actually have phones in them!

Pascale's husband Steve lived in Edinburgh for 3 years.  He suggested we go to George St. for dinner, and he was right.  Our food was amazing.  We had a scallop appetizer,

...and a pork dinner for two.  There were deep-fried shredded pork balls, deep-fried black pudding balls, ribs, pork pinwheels, smashed potatoes, and peas.  It was all so good.  We especially liked the peas, they were covered in a butter sauce that I could have drank with a straw!

There were a lot of really good looking menus on George St.  As we walked back to the hotel, we took our time and read them all.  Look what "new" menu item we found, too bad the bacon wasn't Benton's.

We passed a set of stairs that lead down a bit from street level, and we took it.  It brought us to an old graveyard.  It was quite large and most of the graves we saw were from the 1700's and 1800's.  Each large stone listed the name of the man, his family, and occupation.  I found the fact that they added the occupation particularly interesting.  Some of them were book merchants, wine merchants, teachers, and so on.

There was an amazing view of the castle in the setting sun.  Edinburgh is at the same latitude as Lund, so the days are really long here as well.

When we left we saw the name of the church, and also read that it was the oldest religious site in Edinburgh as well as the oldest building foundation.  The first record of a chapel here was 850 AD. We saw a lot of names that were obviously used in the Americas as they were being settled.  One particular one was Lothian.  This chapel was cornered by Prince and Lothian streets, although well below street level.  While we were there, we saw East Lothian, West Lothian, and Midlothian, which is the name of Richmond suburb where Chris grew up.

Very close to the convention center, which was also on the way back to the hotel, there was this bar.  For those of you who don't know "The Big Lebowski" is a movie by the Coen brothers starring Jeff Bridges.

In the movie, Lebowski is always drinking white russians, which is why he's holding half and half in the picture.