Busy Day

7.55pm
Well we've finally had a day of nice weather!!!! It also means we've had a good day out! :-D We've just got back and i've put our tea in cos i'm ravenous!

It took me ages to get to sleep last night but i kept my window fully open and my blind partly open - i figured the light would wake me up early so that hopefully i will sleep well tonight so that i'll be fresh and alert for the drive home tomorrow.

I woke up at 8.20am and got up and had my breakfast before my mum got up at around 9am. We had a relaxed morning and went out at around 10.30am.

When we got to the city centre the first thing we did was go to the tourist information centre cos we'd seen stuff in there the other day that we wanted to buy. I bought my bagpipes and a few other bits - including a daft dragon hat ;-D ;-D My mum got a whisky cake for my nan and also a few other bits including a pair of scottish pattern earrings.

After that we went and did a bit of shopping along Princes St, we bought a few gifts and also went into M&S to buy stuff for our tea.

We'd planned to do 2 city bus tours, one before lunch and one after lunch so we made our way to Waverley Bridge where all the bus tours start and finish. There was a red bus at the start ready to go ahead so we decided to get on that one. It was a guided tour but the tour was on tape with headphones which you plugged into the side of the bus. It was good because there were 9 channels to choose from, each one in a different language or channel 9 was a kids' one - it was
Horrible Histories ;-D

The tour was really good, we were able to see different views of places we'd already seen and we saw new places that we hadn't seen before :-) We actually saw where the Greyfriars Bobby statue was :-) We'd walked right past it the other day, not realising where it was 8| I did say that we were doing things back to front cos we should've done the tours first to see what we wanted to go and see in more detail but the weather has been so dismal over the past week we didn't want to do any bus tours :-(

For lunch we went into Princes Mall to go to the Food Court cos there were many different food outlets to choose from. I went to Subway and my mum went to KFC.

Once we'd had our lunch we went back out and went to a couple more shops. We also went to another shopping mall that we spotted while we'd been on the bus tour that we previously didn't know existed. As it turned out the shopping mall was just like St John's centre at home but it had one very interesting shop in it - Hawkins Bazaar. That's got loads of interesting things so we went in for a wander round and a good look :-)

After that we went and did our 2nd tour, we did the majestic tour and it went a totally different route to the other one, the only thing was that there didn't seem to be as many photo opportunities :-S We did go past the Royal Yacht Britannia but stupid me had the camera on the wrong setting so i managed to miss a very brief photo opportunity 8| 8|

While we were going round on that tour i decided i really wanted to go back and see the Greyfriars Bobby statue so we figured we could go on another tour that went past that point ;-D ;-D When the 2nd tour had finished we went back into the tourist information centre cos my mum had seen some mugs she wanted to buy, unfortunately when we saw the price of the mugs (£6.99) mum decided there was no way she was going to pay that much for a mug!

We then went back to Waverley Bridge for the 3rd tour ;-D We initially sat downstairs cos we were getting off part-way round but the live tour guide was so good we decided to go upstairs. At one point the bus was having to go on a diversion because of the road closures due to the Tattoo. It was as if he got thrown off his train of thought slightly cos he commented "there's a crane" ;-D Someone near must've commented it was a green crane cos he then said something to the effect that "yes it's a green crane, we have to be specific" ;-D ;-D

When we got near the statue we stood up to get off but we went quite a long way round before we actually stopped, thankfully we'd just done a big circuit and we actually landed really near the statue :-D We took some photos and made our way to the bus stop to catch the next bus to continue the tour.

When the next bus arrived we got on and went upstairs but this guide was really boring and you could hardly hear what he was saying :-( At the very least he needed the volume on his microphone turned up 8| It was also quite late when we were on this tour and we got caught in crawl hour 8| That meant we had longer to endure Mr Boring 8|

Once that tour had finished we went on a hunt for the floral clock which my mum had read about and we asked one of the bus tour operators where it was. We found the clock although my mum wasn't certain if it was the right one cos it was commemorating 100 years of the TA (1908-2008) and the book where mum read about it is far older than that :-S I was saying there surely wouldn't be more than one floral clock in a single park. We came to the conclusion that they must just alter the edge of the clock each year, re-planting new things for whatever is being celebrated that particular year :-/

We found a bus stop on Princes St where our buses stopped and as it happened there was a 25 bus just pulling up :-) While we were going looking for the clock my mum said she was cold and as i got on the bus i realised she was right - in fact i could feel my fingers were going fuzzy - oops, i didn't realise it was cold enough to trigger Raynaud's.

When we got home i immediately put the oven on for tea cos i was so hungry. We've now had our tea and we're watching telly for the evening.