Earthquake, Hurricanes, and Castles. Oh My! 

Monday: Arrive in Edinburgh. Forget that the city is built on bridges. Spend 45 minutes walking around (actually, over) our hotel until I realize I'm a moron. Also, didn't realize ahead of time that the reason it was so expensive to stay in the city is that there's a massive festival going on.

Tuesday: Go off to explore the city. Check Twitter at the hotel and realize that the East Coast got hit with an earthquake. Wonder if anything fell down at our place? (Nope.) Taste a bunch of different scotch whiskys. Awesome. I'm particular to the Islays and Speysides.

From the castle

Wednesday: Climb Arthur's Seat, wearing neither the right shoes nor the proper clothing. Still pretty awesome. Eat a very very good lamb burger.

Steps to Arthur's Seat

Thursday: More random city exploring, including a visit to the very cool Camera Obscura and the National Museum of Scotland.

From the top of the Camera Obscura Building

Friday: We grab a tour across Scotland to Stirling Castle and Loch Katrine. It rains (first time on the whole trip it really rained). When we get home, we realize that Hurricane Irene is going to make our lives miserable (i.e. our flight was already canceled). Make a billion dollar phone call to Delta and get our flights switched to Saturday, rather than Sunday.

Cool

Saturday: Get to the airport very very early. Which turns out to be a blessing, as they can't find our reservation. An hour or so of phone calls and computer wizardry gets us on our flight to Paris, but rather than a 1 hour layover, we've now got a 7 hour layover. And what is probably the last flight to Boston.

Sunday: Slept in my own bed. Turns out Hurricane Irene is all bluster. Some leaves down, some rain, but a pretty quiet day of photo uploading, laundry, and detox. And this blather.