Europe trip - day 1

Here's the first post about our recent trip to Scotland, Germany, and Switzerland!  I don't know how many you'll get at a time, but here's the first day at least.  (If I get going on these, you could get a bunch at once).

Most of my first day was spent on the plane getting there.  I left Wednesday evening and got to Edinburgh, Scotland on Thursday evening.  Alex was already there (and surprised me by meeting me at the bus stop).  Our whole trip was in conjunction with 2 conferences he had - the first was in Edinburgh and the second was in Bern, Switzerland.  I met him at the tail end of his first conference and left at the beginning of his second one.  So we didn't get to fly together, but I was just grateful we were able to go without kids.  Thanks mom and dad for watching the boys!  As far as the time change (Scotland is 8 hours ahead of us), my plan was to not sleep at all on the plane, so I'd be ready to sleep when I got there.  I was tired, but we realized we wouldn't get to see Edinburgh together if we didn't get out on Thursday evening.  So despite being up all night, we walked the Royal Mile in Old Town Edinburgh (a walk just over a mile that connects the Edinburgh castle with several other streets - the streets are lined with little shops, restaurants, churches, and other government and historical buildings).  For dinner, we had pizza while overlooking the city - loved the architecture!  We stayed at the Point Hotel, which was only about 0.5 mile from the Edinburgh Castle.  Not a bad start to our trip (my 1st time ever to set foot in Europe)!