We decided to stay in York long enough to see the Queen, and took up a defensive position outside the main gate where the Lord Mayor would welcome her to the city. The other advantage to our position, we could bolt for the train station immediately after she entered the city and be moving away from the crowd and security forces.

We tried to leave our luggage at the train station so we wouldn't have to haul it with us, but the queue was ridiculously long and slow. They were opening all luggage and checking for bombs with a nitrogen sniffer. We decided it wasn't worth it and hauled our luggage with us.

The Queen arrived, we waved, she waved back, the crowd cheered, we went to the train station. To quote the Beatles, "Her Majesty is a pretty nice girl, but she doesn't have a lot to say."

Once again we caught the Flying Scotsman for the rest of the trip to Edinburgh, where we arrived in the early afternoon. The scenery along the way was continually improving, but was still pleasant but unspectacular. The low, flat hills of England had been replaced by low, medium bumpy hills of southern Scotland.

We spent 2.5 hours trying to book advanced accommodation at Drumnadrochit (a village next to Loch Ness) and Ft. William. We succeeded, but our first real rainstorm of the trip hit and it was a big one. The streets of Edinburgh were flooded. Even the cab driver who saved us from being deluged said it was an unusually strong storm.

It lasted only an hour, but we got soaked before we could reach our Bed & Breakfast, which way quite a way out from the center of town and the castle.

The Bed & Breakfast was in a scary neighborhood. The building was rundown and not at all like the last two Bed & Breakfasts we've stayed in.

We did some walking before it got dark and came to the following conclusion: Scotland is a lot more like the US than England. It has lots more plastic and shopping malls. London and York were quite different.

Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland and the heart of the city looks very mediaeval. Edinburgh castle, which towers over the skyline, is situated on an extinct volcanic plug and looks quite invulnerable.

We stopped into a Balti (India/Pakistani) restaurant which was excellent. Oddly, the proprietor mistook me for a guy who runs a Chinese restaurant down the street. I repeatedly told him I wasn't, but he just didn't seem convinced.

There was no TV in our room, so we hit the sack early. We didn't get to watch Big Brother. I was hoping that they would vote everyone out of the house. What a repulsive group of people they had on that show!