Stirling Castle, Round Two

Monday we had planned to take Andy to Edinburgh to show him the sights. But we were all so exhausted from the weekend, and Beth decided upon waking that she was going to take the day off. Andy was only here for a week though, so me and Liz volunteered to take him to Stirling so he could squish as much tourist stuff in as possible during his stay. Not to mention that Stirling Castle takes about 3 hours, and Edinburgh takes a whole day. We had planned to get up at 8 and get there early so we could take our time, but somehow 8 turned into 9 and then into 10...we eventually made it into Stirling at lunchtime, which was perfect because the weather was gorgeous!

We walked up to the castle and got in line for tickets. Residents of Stirling get in for free, but you have to have paperwork with your address on it proving that you actually live in town. Since me and Liz are residents now, but we don't actually LIVE in Stirling technically (yet), we did a little sweet talking to the girl at the counter and she let all three of us in free. If there's one thing me and Liz are good at, it's talking to you/persuading you/wearing you down until we get what we want! We arrived just in time to catch the next free tour, so we followed the tour guide around while he explained the history of the castle. An hour later, the official tour was over, but the tour guide had missed a bunch of cool info that we learned the first time we visited the castle. So me and Liz gave Andy the abbreviated version of our first tour and let him in on all the good stuff to know.

Not much had changed since the last time we visited. We did get to go into the Queen's gardens though, which we didn't even know was possible last time! It was so pretty with all these different types and colors of flowers. After we spent a few hours there, we decided to head home since we were all pretty tired from the previous few days. We waited at the stop for our bus to show up, and when it finally appeared...it was a double decker bus!! I know this isn't really a big deal, and Andy and Liz were like "Seriously? You're this excited?" but I had never been on one before so I was pretty stoked! I ran straight up to the top and sat right in the front row so I could look out. I started taking pictures out the window, but soon realized that I was being one of those annoying tourist-y people who takes pictures of the most retarded things. So I calmed down, put my camera away, and enjoyed the ride home looking down on traffic and out into the beautiful countryside.

We were glad to get home, and were welcomed with the news that Beth was making us a traditional Scottish dinner of haggis (a sheep's stomach full of other organs like liver, heart, and all the other gross things inside an animal, which is then baked and ground up to look like hamburger meat), neeps (smashed up turnips), and tatties (mashed potatoes).  I wasn't thrilled about the haggis for the simple fact that I knew what it was, but I agreed to try it anyway. I decided when I got here that I was gonna try everything at least once, including the really gross stuff like organ-stuffed-sheep-stomach and blood pudding (which is exactly what it sounds like - the blood of an animal mixed with oats and cooked up into a square, then served on a plate beside sausage and bacon). Surprise! I actually liked the haggis! I mean, I would never crave it, or order it in a restaurant, or cook it myself - but it wasn't disgusting. The neeps and tatties were really yummy as well. After we polished off supper, we all crawled into our beds and watched a little TV before passing out.