nina started this day with a scottish breakfast, consisting of beans, bacon, scrambled eggs, black pudding, sausages, and all the stuff that comes with an english breakfast. not the stuff for me to start the day with, i went for the continental style and had corn flakes, muesli, yoghurt and fruits, toast slices and marmalade. everyone was happy, everyone was pretty filled. time to explore edinburgh. we took the same route we had yesterday evening via waverley station, and headed to the calton hill[011-044]. there are some sights, like the national monument of scotland[018-019,023,027,029], the nelson monument[012-014,022,027,034], or the dugald stewart monument[036,039,043-044], or some ancient canons[020-021], or a view on the impressive holyrood park[024]. all over edinburgh, including the parks and sights on calton hill were fencings. we figured this will be for hogmanay celebrations, the scottish version of new year's eve. judging from the amount of fencing and other signs of preparations, this must be a really huge thing in edinburgh. although this might be nice to see, i am rather glad to be not in edinburgh at this time. this seems like a place with too many people for my taste. on our stroll to high street[045-082] we came along the railway station[045-050] again, walked on the north bridge[047-055], and found st. giles' cathedral[068,070,071,076-082,083-133,134]. there they tore down a huge scaffold[071] which might have been used for christmas decorations (we think). next we went inside st. giles' cathedral[083-133], and bought a photo permit at the souvenir shop located inside the church. two old ladies happily handed me the stickers. nina had her tripod with her, i had to position my camera on all kind of stuff to get a focused shot. the cathedral was built during the 14th and 15th century and is pretty impressive. there even should be a bagpipe playing angel somewhere, but we did not find this one unfortunately. we stopped for a little break in a cafe[136-137], where we were seated outside, since inside there was no free table. fortunately it was not that cold, so sitting outside with hot coffee was bearable. our next sight was edinburgh castle[140-204]. the entrance to the castle is pretty expensive, and it seems this is common amongst the castles, so we decided to buy the "explorer pass". its price is double the entrance fee of edinburgh castle, but once we visit other sights, that pass should pay off. we arrived at the castle at 15:00 o'clock, so it was getting dark again. but then the twilight added much to the gothic and dark atmosphere of the castle walls. bad for pictures, good for ambience. we walked around the castle and took many pictures, but soon the castle was closed, and we were the last ones to leave, escorted by stuff that was happy to go home. yet they were very friendly and gave us some extra minutes to take some more pictures. back in town we went to the edinburgh's christmas market[207-213] in the princes street gardens, where the big wheel and such is. we had a chocolate-coated marshmallow treat[210] since they looked so delicious, and had over 20 flavours to choose from. on our way back to the "eyre guest house" we stopped at the "jekyll & hyde" again to have a steak and ale pie. nomnom, that was really delicious. track for day 02.