Another busy day, and a cold one to be sure. We began by waking a little later than the day before, but we walked whither a nice coach was waiting for us. As we were going out from breakfast, one of our guides, Charine, came and exclaimed ‘Our coach driver’s wonderful, his name is James!” Now only half of this statement was true, and that of course was the coach driver’s coolness. This is because he was fully clad in Scottish regalia, but his name was in fact David. When Adam (of pub notoriety) came out to get on the coach, he stuck his hand out to our coach driver who was at that time leaning against the coach and said “Why hello James” The driver smiled shook his hand and replied “My name’s not James, its David.” This was a pretty funny situation, but when we sat down, I sat in front as is my usual custom, and Cassie came and sat near me, which was always nice to have someone seek and want to sit near your company. As we sat there we talked about a few things and she eventually drifted off as we drove toward Doune Castle. We finally arrived to Doune and it was great, because it was the primary film where Monty Python filmed the Holy Grail in. It was interesting to see it all done and to see where everything occurred. But it was a bit annoying too, because there were many people on the trip who were rather into the film and would do nothing but imitate it. When I say many, I really mean one, Arial, but she was enough. Anyway, it was also very cold too, but it was fun to learn about the history of this place.
After this beautiful castle (and I only say beautiful because of the surrounding landscape, the castle itself was quite dull and ugly frankly), we then went on to the town of Stirling. Stirling was great, because we first stopped at the monument to William Wallace. This was very kitschy because at the very front of it, it had a likeness of William Wallace, but as Mel Gibson and it was so funny that I just had to photograph it. We also went up the hill it was sitting on, and inside the monument. Now the monument itself was constructed in the 19th century, but was not as well thought out from that time as I had expected. It was good though, and had lots of fun things in it. After finishing with this again, we loaded the bus and it was off to eat. We ate at an alright restaurant but there were too many of us, so our orders took a while. After that, we walked our way up the hill to the castle, which was beautiful and we got there a little late, stopping at a pleasant Renaissance house along the way. We did get inside the castle, which was built with the sections of Georgian battlements around it, that were supposed to be able to take artillery fire. It was quite an impressive castle to be sure, but two things to its credit stick out most to me. One was the Great Kitchen. This kitchen was wonderful because it had figures in there working in the kitchen and all of the food for the feast, including several hares, deer, a swan and a peacock, the latter two I had never considered eating before. Anyway, this was all really great too, because they had all these neat situations going on in this.
The next thing that was very impressive to me about this castle was we ran across one of the guides who was the best Scotsman I am sure you could find for this tour. Our own guide was explaining to us one of the buildings (the great banquet hall) when one of the local guides (the fellow mentioned above) overheard him, and gave him a stare of correction I am supposing. So, our guide, Forbes, asked if he was explaining it wrong when this fellow came into the spotlight and shone very radiantly. He proceeded to tell us in a husky brogue the correct information (though Forbes was extremely close) and act it out, he was very dramatic, and mentioned stabbing a fellow and hacking him, as he did to Adam incidentally. Adam being an actor, played along with him, and actually fell after this little scene. It was great, and soon after this, we explored the royal apartments and such and left. We then made our way back to the bus and went back to Edinburgh. When we got back, again I took a long nap. Upon waking, I discovered that I was hungry. Along with one of my other roommates, we went to the Sainsbury’s near us, and bought a lot of food for not too much money, so I was happy. We came back and went to another set of people’s room and watched John Q. After this we watched Austin Powers, all of these mind you were on television. Following that, I was too tired to write this entry so fell asleep.