Thursday October 15th

This morning it was my turn to open my Birthday presents! We went downstairs and I had waffles for breakfast. This left me with none for Saturday – but I was sure we’d find something similar like Scotch pancakes!

I was still feeling a little unwell this morning, but we continued with our plan for today. First up was Linlithgow Palace which – again – was a Palace like I had never seen. Never having read up on it, I was expecting a stately home, when in actual fact it was a ruin! Nevertheless, it was SUCH a fun ruin with SO many passages, stairs, doorways – yet ANOTHER labyrinth to explore. I decided that Northern England and Scottish Castles and Palaces must have had some sort of rule meaning they had to have lots of passages, halls and stairs. Honestly! It’s like a warren in most of the places we had visited so far! Most of the Stewart Kings used to live here, and we were informed that this was the Scottish version of Hampton Court Palace.

At one point, I was at the top of one of the towers, and Mathew was on the other side two floors down! How did I get there? Inevitably, we both explored the Palace individually, managing to meet up in the courtyard when we had finished. Thank goodness there was a courtyard!

We moved on to Blackness Castle which wasn’t in the itinerary, but we saw a sign for it and it wasn’t far away. It was a very nice little Castle, the walls were in the shape of a boat, and this Castle was used in many films like Braveheart and the TV series Ivanhoe. It looks across the River Forth and was mostly reconstructed in 1537 and 1543 under King James V. The courtyard had lots of natural rock and had not been paved, and it was quite a miracle I didn’t fall or slip there! The man in the shop had a really nice accent – strong Scottish but not too much to not understand him. Just right! He was very informative and knowledgeable about the Castle! :o)

After lunch, we headed to Edinburgh again – this time for the Zoo. When we initially saw the map / guide there was no sign of the Polar Bear. I was growing concerned that she had been moved already, even thought the website stated she was to be moved this weekend. The Zoo is on a massive hill which was very frustrating! Honestly! Why do people have to build everything on hills?! And we had to get to the top of the hill to see Mercedes the Polar Bear, and she was lovely. She was sleepy at first, but was moving around later on. She was really big – I can only imagine how large a male Polar Bear would be. Mercedes is 20 years old, and she is being moved to a Highland Wildlife Park – a larger enclosure of about 5 acres. I think she should be happy there!

I was concerned at first about seeing her because I don’t like to see animals looking sad, but she looked quite content, and when she was moving around later on in the day, I’m sure she was posing for the cameras! Also at the Zoo we saw a couple of Koalas which look SO soft and fluffy! They were very cute. We also saw LOTS of penguins!

We got back to the cottage late, having only half an hour to spare before going out for dinner, and fortunately my stomach was feeling fine again. We went to Eyemouth again, but this time we went to a restaurant called “Oblo” where I had a steak which was very nice, although it could have done with some Stilton sauce on it! I had a herby butter instead which sufficed. I followed that up with a Malteser Crème Brulee which was delicious!

We returned to the cottage in Duns and promptly went to bed on happy, full stomachs!

TIRED!!