Day 9 - The Royal Yacht

Now that I am not in control of the alarm clock, we woke at 845 am.  I hate letting time go by sleeping too much when we are in such an interesting place, but I do have to admit that tourist Edinburgh is pretty dead until at least 9.

Our goal today was to complete our Edinburgh Royal pass, which meant we needed to find our way to the Royal yacht Britannia, which is moored down at the Firth of Forth.  After grabbing a quick breakfast we headed down to the train station where we found the tourist bus that goes to the firth.  The weather was beautiful but cold, and I took a few sunny pictures while waiting for the bus to arrive.

One of the points of interest on the way to the firth was the Royal Botanical Gardens.  Melissa really  wanted to stop, though I was a bit less than stoked because I would never think of traveling to Edinburgh to see the exotic plants that grow there.  In fact, I don't have too many pictures of the grounds because they looked a bit like winter had harshed their mellow.  Nevertheless, some of the flowers were in bloom, and they had a bunch of greenhouses that had some interesting stuff.

The next stop was the royal yacht.  My first observation is that it is moored at a shopping mall, which seemed odd.  Either that, or it was odd that a shopping mall had such a good view of the firth.  It was a strange pairing.

We boarded the vessel and took a self guided tour.  The royal yacht takes a staff of hundreds so the royal family can vacation in the lap of luxury.  The boat we saw was the last of many royal yachts.  In fact, since the first royal yacht in the late 1600s they had over 80 constructed.  Some were in service for only a few years.  Very wasteful if you ask me.

After the tour we had a quick lunch at a sandwich shop called Gregg's, which is a local chain.  Melissa was excited to find another chocolate muffin just like the one in Bath, and now she is thinking that there is a conspiracy and they are the same muffin.  For more information she will have to write her own muffin blog, which I am sure will be very interesting to muffin enthusiasts.

We had a pretty chill afternoon, finishing up our souvenir shopping.  For dinner, I did a google search for the best salad in Edinburgh, as I need a break from big dinners and pub food.  We came up with a vegetarian place called Henderson's Bistro, which was over in the new town.  It was a 15 minute walk to get there, and it was worth it.  I had a veggie lasagna, and Melissa had some sort of veggie burger.  Both were really good and felt good in the stomach compared to larger and greasier fare.  

Skyped and bed.  Tomorrow is a big day, as we are heading off on a tour of the Highlands and Loch Ness!