The Way Home

After three nights at Windlestraw, it was time to make our way to the final stop on our tour, Edinburgh. We left on Saturday morning and after half the drive (mostly along a country road with sheep obstacles) we took a forty-five minute stop to visit the ruined Crichton Castle.

Crichton castle was a good visit although a little odd. One drives to a parking lot near an old church in rural Scotland and then follows a rough footpath for five minutes before getting to a paved footpath to the castle where one must track down the minder in order to pay the ticket price!

In any case, the remoteness of it was the likely cause of us being the only people there for some time, another group showing up about fifteen minutes into our exploration of the castle itself.

The castle is quite old and fairly well preserved but its real claim to fame is the Italianesque courtyard facade and Scotland's first scale and platt staircase one Lord had installed while enlarging and transforming the First Castle to a larger, more comfortable Castle.









One of the Lords, , was involved in the "Black Dinner" which serves as inspiration for the "Red Wedding" in Game of Thrones.


After half an hour at Crichton Castle we hopped back in the car and at this point, a side visit to another distillery was under consideration but with our bags already well stocked with scotch, we decided another distillery visit was not a necessity!

We arrived in Edinburgh in the early afternoon, dropped off our luggage at the hotel and then dropped off the car. We strolled back through the Old City of Edinburgh and to our delight discovered that we had been upgraded to a lovely suite by the hotel!










So with newfound spirit we went out for another stroll and ended up filling our shopping bags to the brim at the afternoon market at Grassmarket as well as visiting the lovely Blackfriar's Pub, where we dined on pimiento de padron, before popping one street over to an amazing shortbread store, where we stocked up on shortbread.

Don't miss these gems when visiting Old Town Edinburgh!

We had dinner at a Steak and Mussels place in Grassmarket that was pretty good, although we both agree Canadian beef is better than Scottish beef, but had a bit of a rushed air to it.

Being a Saturday night, we opted to revisit Haymarket where the open air market was long gone but the pubs just getting started.

We enjoyed a couple of pints of Guinness each before deciding to get out.

It was likely the dance floor being empty for the today's Top 40 dance/pop tunes but packed by cougars and louts for seventies disco tunes that helped us make the decision not to have the always dangerous third pint.