Our anniversary trip to Inchcolm Island

To celebrate our anniversary of two years, Mark and I (and Alianna came to party too) went on a lovely boat trip to Inchcolm Island on the Firth of Forth (a river here in Edinburgh). The famous Forth bridge is in the background in this photo. When it was first begun, it was begun by a man named Bouch (pronounced botch). He also designed the first rail bridge over another river. That bridge fell down starting the saying a "botched job". So another engineer took over the Forth bridge. It was the world's first major steel bridge, and although there is some scalfolding on it right now, it is still carrying trains over the river every few minutes.

Alianna's first boat trip! She seemed to like it.
We saw seals basking in the sun, and some peeking their heads out of the water to say hello.
There were puffins out on the water too. They are much smaller than I thought they would be from all the pictures around here.

Here we are on Inchcolm island. This is an old abbey now in ruins. The island isn't used for much now, but is was used for the abbey, then for the military for a while too.

Here are Mark and Alianna in front of the abbey. It is open so you can walk all around inside.

Just before we toured the abbey, a boat landed with a wedding party. A bagpiper led the way into the chapel in the abbey for the wedding.

When we first arrived to the island it was sunny and beautiful, so we hiked around some. We found some beautiful thistles--Scotland's state flower.

We also saw some seagull babies. We started hiking and all of a sudden we saw a lot of seagulls just sitting on the hillside. And there were little babies! Have you ever seen a seagull baby? We hadn't. At first we didn't know what they were.

Then some adult seagulls started diving for us. We ran away. We found an old train tunnel, maybe used to transport military men or equipment. The seagulls chased us, but didn't follow us inside.

After the seagull incident, we sat on the grass and had some lunch, well away from the seagulls. There was a beautiful view of the river behind the abbey, and a storm coming in from the mainland.

Just as we finished lunch and packed up, the storm began. We ran for the shelter of the abbey. Most of the abbey didn't have a roof anymore, so we still got a little wet, but we were able to see a lot under the still intact portions of the roof. It was a nice 12th century abbey.

The rain slowed down to an on and off drizzle as we headed back to Edinburgh.

What a great day! And such a cute girl!