Hello blog readers :)

Scotland is awesome! Today we started out by doing a bus tour of Edinburgh which is the Capitol city of Scotland. Although it may not be as large as Glasgow it certainly does not lack in character. We were all incredibly impressed by the Edinburgh Castle and the architecture in general. There were tons of cute little shops and LOTS of kilts! Like expensive 200 pounds worth of kilts!

If we haven't already mentioned it the landscape of Scotland is beautiful- LOTS of hills and fields. In fact, Edinburgh is surrounded by these great hills and we were lucky enough to drive to the top of one and see the overlook- IT WAS AMAZING! And major kudos to Margot and her wonderful guide abilities, and humorous jokes.

So next we hit up the Royal Highland Show where they show in outdoor grass show rings with white fences. The show is huge and we wish we had even more days so we could experience each part. So we are food consuming girls, and thus we hit up the food area, and samples were the apples of our eye! I immediately found our initial sample, and by the end of our food excursion we had tried every sample possible, and boy were we stuffed! We tasted everything from strawberries to shortbread cookies, fudge, meats, ice cream, cheeses, jams and chips. We didn't even purchase a legitimate lunch and walked the entire length of the building. And we even had full-cream Jersey milk out of a plastic shot glass! John may have been bashing on Jersey's yesterday, but somebody in Scotland puts them to wonderful use :).

So back to the cow part, we were really impressed by the Young Farmers program that Scotland has, and they seem to be very involved and fun. They had a large booth set up and it was quite cool. Outside they had a Wii sheep shearing game that was led by an enjoyable young red-headed fellow. They also had a bike racing contest (on the kind you ride in the gym), all in hopes to raise money to promote agriculture education in Africa. Inside they had a variety of booths that Young Farmers created, much like those that 4-H clubs create in contests. They had AMAZINGLY decorated cakes in an African Safari theme- asks to see pictures because they were way cool.

We ended up being led around by two gents named Alexander and Graham. Alexander won the Young Stockman Contest last year and showed us all the livestock and dairy and explained how they evaluate each. VERY DIFFERENT they are when it come to beef cattle, but they really do judge Dairy in a similar fashion, with the exception that they prefer them to be more moderate framed, and are not as incredibly into the 'dairy' look (don't get us wrong they are still angular and feminine). They only show a few dairy breeds and they are Holsteins, Ayrshires,and Jerseys.

We have an early day tomorrow with the contest and will update you sometime tomorrow night with the results. Another long, but successful day, we are hungry for more!
<3 The Team <3