The morning news explained how yesterday's rain caused the worst flooding in 8 months. That's not so bad, except that they went on to explain that the flooding 8 months ago was some of the worst in decades. I guess we just had great timing. At least people might stop thanking us for bringing lovely weather from Arizona with us.

Breakfast was at one big table, where all the guests sat together. The other guests were an elderly couple from Pennsylvania and a teacher from Hong Kong, who made the mistake of explaining how Taiwan was going to come under Mainland Chinese control. I was quite proud of Chu-Wan for not chewing him a new asshole. I noticed that she involuntarily stiffened at the table.

We walked into town and toured the castle, which is enormous. The castle holds a lot of the history of Scotland, including the Honors, which were Scotland's crown jewels until they united with England to form the United Kingdom.

A long-standing tradition at Edinburgh castle is the 1:00PM cannon, which can be heard all over the city. I was looking forward to it, until I forgot about it at around 12:50. I remembered at 1:00PM, though, when I, Chu-Wan and everyone else standing in the gift shop were startled out of our socks by the report.

There is a gallery containing the names of the dead from the Highland regiments in World War I at the castle, and I was surprised at just how many Glovers served (and died) in them. Glover is not a particularly Scottish name, but apparently there are a lot of them in Scotland -- or were, they may have all died in WWI considering their numbers in the books.

The volcanic plug that the castle sits upon was carved away by a glacier, which left one side intact, this gently sloping section in known as the Royal Mile and is lined with shops. We walked down the Mile and at the end is Holyrood Palace. Another palace didn't interest us, so we went to a nearby park and climbed Arthur's Seat, another imposing rock out-cropping overlooking Edinburgh.