Day Two: Well…Dad is addicted to Irn Bru.

Whew! We needed some sleep. We managed to stay up until 9:30 last night (I stayed up until 11 watching the last three episodes of my latest Korean TV obsession). We got up bright and early and decided to walk down to the Royal Mile since the tour buses weren’t running yet, in search of a scotch egg for breakfast.

We passed the Scottish Parliament on the way (as one does?).

After half an hour of fruitless searching for a place that was both open and serving scotch eggs, we gave up on the eggs and stumbled upon the Nether Bow Port Cafe where we got something to eat.

By the time we were done a bunch of the shops were starting to open up (we got up too early for Edinburgh apparently) and we popped into an outdoor clothing shop across the street that was having a BOGO sale on thermal leggings, since it’s not cold anymore for Scots (???). A sweater and two pairs of leggings richer, we headed out again towards Edinburgh Castle down the Royal Mile.

We got to the castle just a bit after 9 and got our Scotland Explorer passes so that we can pop in and out of castles for the next week. The view from the castle is AMAZING. We looked around and popped in and out of the exhibits for a little while before hitting the gift shop (Dad got a book about Armstrong clan history and his 2nd bottle of Irn Bru).

We headed to look for some tartan and tweed and Dad found the PERFECT tartan flat cap to complete his ensemble.

I was still in search of a scarf and hat (my ears were freezing!) so we popped in and out of shops along the way down the Mile until I was able to find a comfy knit hat with a cute pompom.

We continued our wander down the road and found a Tesco where I decided to buy some McVittie’s (THEY’RE ONLY A POUND HERE???) and some shortbread. I quickly introduced Dad to McVittie’s digestives (He approves) and we meandered down the street towards a bus stop for the tram towards Hollyrood House. We got off the bus only to discover…that it’s closed on Wednesdays.

Dad looked up, spotted Hollyrood Park and goes “How about we do that?”. To be clear, this is what he was looking at when he spoke those words.

I said, “Are you sure?” and away we went to climb to Arthur’s Seat. It was a gorgeous hike and we got to see the gorse that covers the hill up close.

We made it to the top and had a snack of digestives and shortbread (some of which I fed to the crows that were loitering). The hike back down was MUCH easier and we stopped by St. Margaret’s Loch on the way down, to see all the swans (I also fed them shortbread…).

Dad stopped and got an ice cream cone on the way back to town (he says it’s the best ice cream he’s ever had) and we decided to head to the Royal Botanical Gardens (because clearly we hadn’t done enough waking for the day 😂). After two failed attempts to locate a bus we gave up and went in search of snus instead (also a fail but I found some tunnock’s teacakes and tablet for us to try).

We tried one more time to find the missing bus stop and I finally gave up and located a taxi which took us straight there. The Royal Botanical Gardens are MASSIVE. The plants in it are massive, the trees in it are massive, and there’s just so many cool plants to see… We wandered around (lost for the most part) but found a bench in the sun to sit and rest awhile before our next exploits.

Deciding that we needed to head back to the hotel for a bit we FINALLY located the bus outside the gardens and rode around to our stop. We hadn’t yet found Dad’s snus so we explored some of the shops around the hotel and found some nearby. Snus is basically tobacco in these little pouches rather than loose like chewing tobacco.

Both are tobacco and therefore gross.

He also remembered to get his third bottle of Irn Bru, but opted for the sugar free variety this time (what???) which he promptly pronounced tasted exactly the same (???).

We made it back to No. 11 and flopped down to rest a bit before we locate a pub for some traditional Scottish food for dinner.

A brief rest later and we’re off to dinner at the Royal Mile Tavern! We opted for a taxi as the buses had already stopped for the day. Dad ordered salmon while I got the haggis bites, a scotch egg, and a fried Mars bar, to tick several things off our Scotland score card. Haggis was fine, my scotch eggs are definitely better, and we need fried Mars bars in the U.S.…like now.