Edinburgh, Scotland

Last weekend we took our trip to Edinburgh, Scotland! I got around to processing some of the photos last night so here they are! I'll try to explain a little bit about each of them as I go. The above photo was taken at the England/Scotland border. We were there at the same time as another American family, so we traded taking photos for eachother.I loved this picture of DH above, except that he wasn't smiling! We had stopped at a pub called The Filling Station for some drinks. He had an ice cold Guinness (below) and I splurged on a cherry coke! Both of these photos were taken with the natural light from the window. The pub was really dark, but there might have been a little bit of light fall off from the adjoining room, so I can't say for certain it's COMPLETELY natural light, but mostly.
After we checked into our hotel, and then went off to explore. As we turned the corner, we came face to face with this monument, called the Scott Monument, after Sir Walter Scott. You could climb to the top, but by the time we actually decided to do it (and it wasn't raining), we were both exhausted and our legs hurt from all the hill walking and changed our minds.

We also came across several statues and artworks in random places. We saw this huge foot, and were joking about how we didn't see Nessie, but we saw Big Foot! (Har Har Har). Here's me posing with said foot.

We found our way to a place called Camera Obscura, sounds like just the place for me!! It was full of visual effects, lighting tricks and all sorts of cool stuff! It was really dark in most places, so only a few photos came out (these are all handheld with no flash). This first photo was actually a ghosting effect. Drew and I were sitting on opposite sides of a plexiglass type screen, and the lights were raised and dimmed to the desired effect, so while it looks like we're sitting next to each other, he was facing me, and I was facing him taking the photo. Cool huh!
We've all seen these things I think! This one was really huge! I tried to get a photo of Drew with his hands on it, but it was too dark to see him, so I took a separate one with just the ball.
I thought this one came out cool too! It was like an inverted ball with lighting that you stuck your hand (or face, etc.) into and it beamed the reflection on the opposite side. This isn't a photoshop trick, the photo is straight out of the camera, just edited to bring out the details a little bit!This is a star room, with the stars changing color. It was mirrored all around creating the look of never ending stars.
I just thought this photo was cool, but it really just changed from color to color , red being the most bold of them.
At the top of Camera Obscura you had just about a 360 view of the city. They were setting up for the Edinburgh Tattoo in August, so the stadium was blocking the view of the castle, so we took photos from the other directions. Here's the view of the Royal Mile from the top of Camera Obscura.


We also got a nice view of the National Monument (a partial replica of the Acropolis in Greece). We tried to find it later, but somehow managed to walk completely around this huge hill, missing it entirely! Our map wasn't very clear.
Speaking of the Royal Mile, it runs from Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood House. I'll cover those a bit more later. The following photos are just shots from the Royal Mile.

St. Giles Cathedral was on the Royal Mile as well. We went in it on Saturday afternoon to check it out. It was really dark inside, so we didn't get a lot of photos, but I did get this gorgeous photo of the cathedral tall Organ (taken with natural light from the stained glass windows).

We finally made it up to Edinburgh Castle, which was really cool! You can read all about it here.

We took a guided tour through the castle and learned all about the different sections and the history. We climbed the winding trail all the way to the top where we stopped to take some photos. Here's one from the top. You can see just below people are starting to gather for the One O'clock Gun.
Speaking of the One O'Clock Gun, our tour guide was telling us how it used to be the 12 O'clock Gun, but since the "Scottish are so thrifty" that they changed it to the One O'clock gun so they could save 11 bullets per day! They shoot the gun every day at One, except on Sundays, and we were lucky enough to catch it in action! Here's the photo in the seconds leading up to the shot. The gunner has a small watch in that he held up to wait for it to be exactly One.

I had the better spot with only a few people in front of me, but unfortunately when the gun went off, I jumped so bad that the picture turned in to a blurry crooked mass! Luckily Drew got the shot of the gun going off with the P&S, but had a ton of people in front of him. I was still glad that we got it, so here it is!
Down below the castle (I mean WAY below) there was a beautiful garden where Drew and I went to relax on our last evening in Scotland. We took a few photos of the sides of the hill in which we had to climb up to get to the Royal Mile. First, we have the Bank of Scotland which is now a museum, then Edinburgh Castle. The last two was of some buildings on the side of the hill that I thought were neat (you can see the top of Camera Obscura on the left behind the white building), and Drew snapped a shot of me taking my photo. There were a lot more photos, but for the sake of time and space, I whittled it down to these to post. Thanks for looking!