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Well, we're here! We landed on time in Edinburgh at 3:40pm, so we had to kill some time since we had reserved the car at 5pm to give us more leeway getting it back to Heathrow next Monday. Since mrmouse is the greater autophile, I let him drive first from the airport to downtown...what adventures! heehee...I'll get my turn soon enough, though! Since the full weekly rental car rate is a better deal, plus we'd have to pay the shuttle to get to & from the airport if we went back out there to pick up the car Monday morning, I decided we'd just have the car here sitting somewhere while we're in the city so we can leave straightaway Monday morning and get an earlier start to get all the way up to Torridon. Of course our hotel doesn't have parking, but we found a lot a few blocks away who let us in for £10 from Saturday afternoon to Monday morning. I had suggested dropping our luggage off at the hotel curb with the other person going to park but mrmouse said "nah"...he regretted that after hauling our bags those several blocks! So, it'll be my turn Monday morning to drive the car around the block full of luggage while he's checking us out of the hotel on our way to Torridon. ;)

After we got up to our room & dropped off our luggage, we headed out for the Royal Mile around 6:30pm, getting to the Mercat Cross near St Giles Cathedral about 7:15, so we'd just missed the hourly ghost tour we wanted. We went down the street a bit to eat at a nice little pub called the Royal MacGregor, where we both had Strongbow to drink, a smoked salmon salad, then he had chicken stuffed with haggis wrapped in bacon with a cream whiskey sauce, and I had the Haggis Tower! Gotta love that name! ;) It was just some haggis with mashed potatoes on top, formed in a cylinder, but both our meals were delicious! We also shared a traditional Scottish dessert called Carrochan, berries, oatmeal & whiskey cream, with whipped cream on top. We made it to the 9pm "Ghost & Ghouls" tour, which was PACKED, so even though it was still good, it was a bit too many people. It did its job of keeping us awake, but just barely! We walked back to our hotel along Princes St, which has the best views of the castle lit up at night, so of course we stopped for a few photos. After fighting with the dialup, mrmouse finally got it working, so he's already posted while I had a much-needed shower. I feel much better now, and definitely ready for a good night's sleep! My earplugs are at the ready for possible snoring defense... ;)

Until next time...