City Centre

7.10pm
We've been out today and got back about 6pm ish

My mum was actually up before me today :-o I was half-awake / half-asleep from about 7.30 but i didn't actually get up until 8.45 when i went down for breakfast and a shower.

We went out at about 10.30 and walked over to the park and ride place. We got a load of leaflets, mostly about the buses - logically as we were in a bus station. We spotted people who appeared to be buying bus tickets so we decided to buy ours as well. When the bus came and we watched others getting on and we read the leaflets it turned out it was a good job we'd bought our tickets at the station. We didn't have the correct change but if you pay on the bus you do need the right money cos you put the money in a machine then the ticket comes out of another machine.

When we got into the city centre my mum decided she wanted a new pair of shoes cos she only had sandals with her so we started off (in the pouring rain) heading for a shopping mall that was on the map and we spotted the entrance for it. As it turned out the mall wasn't very good really, there were quite a few empty units and the shops that were open were really expensive :-(

Once we'd exhausted the limited possibilities of Princes Mall we went into the tourist information centre and that was a successful excursion! We got loads of different leaflets, including city centre street maps :-D :-D We also had a look through the things to buy and i was very tempted by some bagpipes ;-D ;-D

While we were in there a lady with a clipboard who said she was with the tourist board asked us where we were from and when my mum said Liverpool (!!! :-o) she said they'd had so many people from England today that we weren't eligible to take part in the survey ;-D ;-D

We then continued on our hunt for shoes with a few distractions into other shops. We went into The Works and got quite a few Scotland souvenirs - i bought 2 t-shirts for myself and one of them was in a child size - age 12-13 ;-D

We then found some trainers for my mum in Barratts at a price she was prepared to pay. We then went into the BHS restaurant for lunch.

After lunch we headed towards the Royal Mile which, according to the map has quite a few attractions we wanted to see. Unfortunately the road we ended up going along also included a huge flight of steps which my mum wasn't very pleased about :-(

We found the Royal Mile via a little squiggly road with quite a few interesting shops on - not that we bought anything ;-D

One place i really wanted to see on the Royal Mile was the Museum of Childhood - it was free to get in and it was really good :-D It was on 5 (smallish) levels and there were plenty of arifacts to make you go "awww" ;-D ;-D I also took LOADS of photos ;-D

Once we came out of there my mum had decided she'd had enough :-( We did need to get some bits from a supermarket so we headed towards the area we'd been in yesterday - it was further away than i realised :-$ Also as we were walking along, the rain started LASHING down again 8| We found Sainsbury's again and got the bits and pieces we needed.

We then had to discover where to get our bus home from. We knew we were on the right road but not sure which side of the road we had to be on. We found the correct side of the road but the first bus stop didn't have our bus number on it :-S I had a theory that it was too close to the right turn as we'd just seen a 34 bus so we wandered down to the next bus stop and thankfully that was the right place to get our bus - and we just missed a 34 bus again 8|

Since we've been back we've basically just sorted out our stuff that we bought, had our tea and watched telly - and that's what we'll be doing for the rest of the night.