Edinburgh Castle and top of the Royal Mile

Oscar and I actually head out of the place to forage for breakfast. 

We head over to the little Tesco express two streets over and find Krispy Kreme in the front.  Oscar is so excited and we get a little 3 pack to take home with us.  We return and John has his page done.  I can’t believe how depressed he seems without the internet available to us.  I have my books on my phone downloaded on kindle, so I’m fine.

 But John just rolls over and goes to sleep before 10pm because he has no desire to do anything.  It’s kind of sad and it’s getting really annoying that the wifi seems “fixed”, but his phone and Oscar’s still won’t connect or even see the wifi.  Good thing that we still have a TV that speaks English here.  Oscar would be upset about his phone if not, now he just knows 

how every British game show is played.  He acted out the Chase this morning with him as the host and the chaser catching me and puppy.  Again, the learning that is happening on this trip is amazing.  We head out to finish the Royal Mile today.  We are going to head through Grassmarket up to Edinburgh Castle and down from there.  We’re taking a back way

there from our place and suddenly we’re at Greyfriar’s and the little dog statue is there, we walk through the cemetery and this place gets more play now because Harry Potter tours go through here.  A lot of the characters’ names come from here and Rowling wrote at a place near here, so Greyfriar’s no longer needs that loyal dog to be famous.  We take an obscene 

amount of stairs up to the Castle with a stop in the middle to get something to drink and some real breakfast.  We head up to the castle finally and we’re only 30 minutes away from the cannon firing at 1pm, but we decide that we have no interest in paying 17 pounds a person to get in to this place.  I know it’s got a lot of history in there, but Oscar could care less,

I’ve been here before and John just isn’t feeling it.  You can go in the courtyard and the gift shop for free, so we connect to the wifi and call Oscar’s class.  It’s so funny watching all of these kids yell things at each other from so far away.  Oscar doesn’t know what to say to them, I tell him to show them the castle we’re at, but he doesn’t care about that.  He

    listens to them talk about things that they want to show him in the class and the teachers’ trying to get them to not fight about who gets to talk next…it’s really productive.  But it makes him feel connected and us connected too in a way.  He will have to return there when we get home and I want it to be an easy thing to do.  We get to hear the loud boom of the cannon and start heading down the mile.  There are all of these

whiskey places (of course), but John can’t mail any of it home and there is only so much that he can drink while we’re here.  So, it’s kind of a wash.  When we go into the pubs and bars, I encourage him to look at whiskey or whiskey flights, but most of the whiskey listed, he has at home or has had at home.  I realize that this is a losing battle and he has moved beyond the idea of a whiskey tasting….John’s a connoisseur of whiskey at this point. 

He finds some things at “Malt Disney” that he would love to send home, but you can’t pay 100 pounds to mail something home that you’re going to drink.  Not worth it.  We have a good time watching all of the street performers.  Correction, Oscar has a great time watching the street performers.  There is a guy dressed up

as a Pict warrior and he lets Oscar hold a broad sword, tells him some history and then sanitizes his hands because he says his wife makes him.  He was great and then there is a fire juggler who is also an escape artist.  There are bag pipers and others, but these are the two that got our money and the young kid playing the bagpipe also.  We had 

 Italian again at Bella Italia and while the food was not as good as at Pizza Express, Oscar did eat all of his spaghetti, then tried honeycomb gelato.  So, the kid is getting more adventurous in the eating department on this trip.  We head home to have some time with “cars and trucks” which is his forever lament about us leaving the house or time for bed.  What’s amazing is this is the same problem we have in Michigan.  He doesn’t want to leave the

   house because he would rather play with his cars and trucks and doesn’t want to go to bed for the same reason.  He’s doing just fine with 6 cars and trucks on this trip vs the 100’s he has at home…