there is NO WAY that i can post the rest of the photos from scotland before halloween.  HALLOWEEN IS IN ONE WEEK.

i hadn’t even gone through all the photos to see which ones i want to post, and i just did that (yes, another exciting saturday night!), and there are almost 60 more that i want to post.

just not gonna happen this week.

but then again, you never know.

on our second full day in edinburgh, it rained.  we took the bus to the Royal Botanic Garden; it was supposed to be much better than the lovely small botanic garden in Glasgow, which we went to lo those many months prior, at the very beginning of the trip, the very first day we were in scotland when we were suffering from severe jet lag.

the bus ride took quite a while but it was enjoyable.  we got off at the garden and went in the gate and this is the sculpture they had there:

pretty cool, huh?  so we had high hopes for this botanical garden.

and then it started to rain.

first it was just kind of drizzling, but it was a bit chilly.

we kept walking around, but there were mostly…trees.  nice trees, to be sure, but it wasn’t anything like the beautiful and interesting Missouri Botanical Garden.  We expected something called the Royal Botanical Garden to be very very…fancy.

not so.  it wasn’t huge, but we walked all around even though it was raining and not so great to be out in the weather.  we found the little restaurant and waited approximately one million years in a neverending line to get some scones and tea and coffee.  the place was jammed with people, many of them small, loud children.  but it was nice to be warm and out of the rain.

i remember that there was a group of kids from a school or maybe a nursery school, all huddled outside at a picnic table.  eating their lunch in the rain.

i guess you get used to that kind of thing at an early age there in scotland.  we noticed other kids playing around on a pathway, throwing rocks that i know were definitely not supposed to be thrown.  they were having a great time, and didn’t mind the rain at all.

i kept taking lots of video of the trees, because jim is very interested in trees.  he hasn’t seen the video yet, and actually, neither have we.  i’d love to sit down some night and keep watching the rest of the video.  perhaps this will happen someday soon.

here’s the victorian greenhouse.  we popped in there for a few minutes, but it was cooler on the outside.

this is a petrified tree.  very old.  i’m sure i have many details about it on the videotape, which hopefully we’ll watch very soon.

i could put it in right now if i wanted to, but that would involve finding the tape in the closet and i don’t have the energy for that right now.

we look happy, don’t we?  after this it rained even more.  we went into the gift shop and kept wandering around and i was dying to buy something, anything, but i just couldn’t find anything interesting.  i finally bought amy two sets of paper napkins.  yeah, paper napkins, how lame is that?  but they were pretty, and i hadn’t bought her anything at all yet for taking care of our animals for almost an entire month.

napkins.  paper napkins.

we finally left the shop because we realized it wasn’t going to stop raining any time soon.

and then…where are all the photos of the rest of our day?  maybe kevin got tired of taking pictures because i was constantly taking video?  maybe he didn’t want to shoot in the rain?  i can’t say.  perhaps he’ll enlighten me about that.

anyway, we walked to a bus stop to go down to Leigh, an Edinburgh suburb on the sea, because we wanted to take a tour of the Royal Yacht Brittanica.  first of all, it took a while to get to the bus stop in the rain.  when we finally got there, no bus.  we waited over a half hour, huddled in the little shelter, and were very happy when one finally arrived.

it was a long trip down to Leith and when we got there the weather continued to be miserable.  here’s the weird thing – the Royal Yacht Brittania, which used to belong to the Queen, is docked in front of a shopping mall.  you have to go into the big ugly mall to buy tickets for the ship, and you get onto the ship exiting the mall.  very strange.

just when we got to the booth for tickets, there was a huge, huge crowd of Spanish schoolchildren waiting.  teenagers.  we didn’t look forward to touring the ship with all of them.

finally we got our tickets and went aboard.

WHERE ARE ALL THE PHOTOS???

i ask you, my husband, mr. hughes.

i took lots and lots of video.  it was very interesting and incredibly luxurious – except for quirky things like single twin beds for the queen and prince philip.  ok, so they have separate bedrooms – but wouldn’t the queen want, well, a QUEEN-sized bed?  it’s funny how she economized.  also, she had a pretty big office and the audio guide talked about how many hours a day she had to work.  then we saw philip’s “study,” really like a comfy library or den, and i don’t even think he had a desk.  much easier to be the prince, i think.

it was a very interesting tour and you’ll have to come over and watch the video sometime.

no photos.

we left the ship and walked out into the mall and kevin bought a new umbrella and i bought a new purse because my tiny little black purse had burst at the seams because it was kind of cheap and i kept stuffing many too many things into it.  i didn’t want to have to decide on a “real” purse, so i got a cheap one that i figured i could throw away when i got home.  it was just nice to have something i didn’t have to clutch at in order for the stuff to not all fall out.

we left the mall and headed out, and it was raining and also cold and windy.  we walked a ways and found a nice little pub that was almost empty when we got there, but by the time we’d finished our early dinner the place was packed, with mostly locals.  i overdid it a little on the seafood, because they had such interesting-sounding stuff.  i had fresh sardines to start out with, which i’d never had, and then had a very rich seafood chowder.  plus cider, of course.

we took another bus back to town and were happy to be there.

the next morning before we left, kevin took some pictures of our room.  note the fresh roses on the bureau.  and a flat screen tv – our host Robin had described many things to us in detail, but he forgot to mention that there was a great collection of british DVDs in the bureau – all kinds of humor and stuff we’d have loved to see, but we didn’t find it till i looked in the drawer the morning we left.  oh well.

i thought kevin took a picture of our big sherry decanter, but you have to picture it over there on the left edge of the dresser.

my favorite part of the room was the bathroom – all during the biking i kept wanting a bathroom with a tub so i could take a nice hot bath, but none had a tub.  finally we got one, and i did take a bath, except by then i didn’t feel like it so much.  but it was lovely.

and so, wednesday morning we took a cab to the train station and took the train to Glasgow, for our final night in Scotland.

ok then,

saturday night grace.