Balfour Castle, Orkney Islands

I was mistaken when I said at the end of the last post that the next castle was my favorite. It's actually the castle on the NEXT post that is my favorite, but this one wasn't bad!
This is Balfour Castle on the island of Shapinsay, which is one of the islands of Orkney. The Orkney Islands (there are about 70 of them) are located just north of Scotland.

My favorite photo of the day

Notice the car

And then someone came out and moved it just as we arrived. Better! 

This is the library. There's a secret here. 

This is the secret passageway. I wish I had a secret passage in my house! 

It was designed so that the owner could slip away
and the butler could say he was "out"
if there was someone there to see him when he didn't want to be seen.  Now you see him...

now you don't! 

I waited for over five minutes for the people standing by the door to leave. They never did. 

So in the meantime, we took a walk through the gardens.

 

This is where my good camera died. From here on and for the rest of the trip, all the photos are taken with my purse camera. 

When we returned, the people still hadn't moved, so I asked them to move.
They were happy to oblige. 

How far do you think a cannonball can fire?

They train the trees to grow on the wall. So cool. 

This was take-two. I wish I wasn't so picky. 

We had to tender to the shore this day, and because we then took a ferry to our destination, I was able to get a picture of the ship that I had not to this point been able to capture.

We may not have seen anything else but because my camera broke, we walked into town to find a place to inquire about the problem. We got to see a lot more stuff because of that. 

There were a lot of interesting gravestones. 

Looking back, I can see how pale Bud was.
We came home and put him in the hospital for three days for anemia. 

The line to the tender was so long it gave me a lot of time to wander around the docks. 

Okay, for real this time, the NEXT castle was my fave-o-rite ev-er.

Culzean Castle, Scotland

Here is Culzean (pronounced Col-lane...yeah, go figure) Castle. 

I was taking a picture of Bud when someone asked if we wanted our picture taken together. 

Yes, that's us, but I'd rather have had more of the arch in the frame than all that dirt.

Inside the turret on Bud's right

Almost there...

Ta-da! The castle. 

Gorgeous flowers throughout the area. 

Good thing there was no chance of this thing firing. 

This is the first room you come to inside the castle, the weapon room. 

Stairs. I didn't know we weren't supposed to take pictures inside the castle until just after this shot. Oops. 

This is on our way to the duck pond. Cool tree. 

We saw this bird on our way in and on our way out. He hadn't moved, except for his wings. 

This was on the way out and he held this "pose" for several minutes.
I don't know who he was trying to impress (besides me). 

Bud has a habit of feeding the birds (or chickens or fish) to get them to come close. 

The other side of the castle after we'd walked to swan lake. 

 

The old bridge in the town of Ayr. 

Same bridge, opposite side. 

I really liked this castle, but I loooooved the next castle coming up! It's what fairy tales are made of, for sure!