Edinburgh and York

We started off the third day of our Northern trip with our third hike to Rydal Mount - where Wordsworth lived for the last 40 years of his life. It was next to a huge estate owned by a church which was beautiful!

We got back on the coach and started our journey to SCOTLAND!  On the way, we stopped at Castlerigg Stone Circle which is older than Stonehenge.  I think we were all a bit stir crazy because as soon as we got to the stone circle, we were all climbing around on the rocks.  It was harder than it looked for me :)

Stuck :)

Almost there...

Conquered!

We got back on our coach and then we drove to EDINBURGH!  We checked into our hostel and then we had a few hours to explore.  We wandered down the Royal Mile and eventually found our way to The Elephant House, where JK Rowling started writing Harry Potter.  In the bathroom, fans have written messages to JK Rowling and about Harry Potter.  It was really fun to read!

(Fun fact: Tiffany and I are going to be neighbors in the Fall!)

The last activity for the night was hiking to the top of Arthur's Seat where Orson Hyde dedicated Great Britain for missionary work..  It was a HARD hike, but probably my favorite of the ones we did!  It is one of the only hills/mountains in Scotland so we could see for miles and miles - all the way to the ocean!

The next morning we checked out of our hostel and embarked on a short tour of the Royal Mile up to Edinburgh Castle.  Our tour guide was cracking jokes left and right!

Me with David, our tour guide

After our tour, we finished wandering.  We went to Prince's Street, the Sir Walter Scott Memorial, St Andrew Square, and Calton Hill.  Our lunch took longer than expected, so we were running around at the last minute trying to buy souvenirs!

It was back on the coach for another 5 hours to YORK!  I loved this cute little town!  We explored the first night and in the morning we toured York Minster.  They didn't have audio guides for us, so we were wandering around until a volunteer guide started talking to us about the stained glass restoration they are working on right now.  It was fascinating!

We finished up York by walking around the old Roman walls and grabbing some food before we headed over to Fountains Abbey.  Fountains Abbey is the ruins of an old abbey from the 1100's.  It was huge!  Behind the abbey was a field of yellow flowers.  We always see huge fields of these flowers when we drive on the coach and they are my favorite!  Katherine and I were exhausted so we ended up laying in the flowers for a good hour or so.  It was wonderful!