The Royal Mile plus 250 meters--Part Deux (and Quatre)

After the castle, my notebook said we needed to head back down the Royal Mile and check out a few things on our way to the Palace of Holyroodhouse.

(I just love streets like this!)

Our first stop was the Writers' Museum. Free entry! Woohoo! This little museum focused on the lives of three Scottish writers, perhaps you've heard of them: Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Burns, and Sir Walter Scott. This museum had a thing for displaying locks of hair. We just did a quick walk-thru because we were pretty starving...

(The Writer's Museum)

Next we went into St. Giles, which was really pretty inside. We didn't take any pictures because you had to pay a fee to take photos, but you get in for free. It's hard to get a good picture in a big church like that anyway.

(St. Giles Church)

Finally, it was time to do what we'd been waiting to do since the previous evening...eat lunch! We passed by "The Baked Potato Shop" on our way to the Albanach for dinner the night before and decided that we wanted to go there for lunch. David ordered better than I did. I didn't know what the fillings were, so I picked one that looked good, with corn and red beans. But it was too spicy to enjoy it. David picked 3 different fillings, pasta salad, chickpea salad and something else and says his was delicious. He didn't share a bite with me, but I let him eat mine. There was only one table in the place and it was taken, so we ate outside.

(Mr. Potato Head)

Next, on the list: The John Knox House. It's been there since the 15th Century. We had no idea who John Knox was (but a quick internet search says he was the founder of the Presbyterian church, and he used to be the preacher at St. Giles). We only went in as far as the gift shop, because 1--you had to pay to get in and 2--we still had 2 really time-consuming things on the list! We actually went to the John Knox House twice, because the first time, I saw a really cute picture book called "This is Edinburgh" and I wanted it. So we picked it up on the way back.

(John Knox House)

Somehow we missed the Museum of Childhood, which we should've come across right after the John Knox House. I don't think David was too distraught about that. We passed by the new Scottish Parliament (10 years old this year). I'm going to skip ahead a little here to Part Four (I'll do part 3 later!). After the next 2 stops on our tour, we went into the Parliament building and one of the greeters gave us passes to the gallery to listen to the debates that were going on. We listened just for a little bit (I think because David, who claims to be Scottish---although I have my doubts--- didn't really understand what they were saying. :) And we didn't really know the issues.) It was a nice chance to sit down nonetheless!

(Funky building!)

On the way back, we stopped for a snack...fudge! We asked the (American) girl who worked in the fudge shop what her recommendation was. We could only pick one kind, because we only had 1.32 pounds with us by this point! She said the very Scottish thing would be to order the Butter Tablet. So we did...and it was absolutely fabulous. We sat in a bus stop shelter and ate it, and this nice woman came and asked us if we were waiting for a bus, and if we wanted her day pass!

We had dinner at Pizza Express, which is actually the very first restaurant I ever ate at in the UK (in 2000). It was a very convenient location, as it was directly below our hotel room!