Today was devoted entirely to walking around Edinburgh. We had been warned about the weather in Scotland, so we able to slog through the partly cloudy weather with temperatures in the upper 60's. Our first task was to find breakfast, since our room rate didn't include it. We had spotted several pubs (including the Conan Doyle) which had signs saying that they served food all day, but we discovered that "all day" starts at 10:00AM. So we wandered through most of the New Town until we found a place that was actually open.
Once we were fed, we headed to the Royal Mile to do the tourist thing, with our eventual destination being Edinburgh Castle, which was at the top of the Royal Mile.
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| Jenners Department Store |
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| Edinburgh Castle in the background; Scottish National Gallery in the foreground |
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| Business kilt. We saw a few other guys in kilts, but they were all serving some sort of tourist fuction. |
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| A view of Edinburgh Castle from below. The scaffolding on the left is/are bleachers that they set up for the Royal Tattoo in August, which is the main tourist event in the city. |
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| Entrance to the castle. |
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| View of the New Town from Edinburgh Castle |
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| The One O'Clock Gun at Edinburgh Castle, which, as you might guess, is fired every day at 1:00PM. |
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| St Margaret's Chapel, the oldest surviving building in Edinburgh, which dates from the early 12th century. This is inside Edinburgh Castle. |
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| Inside St. Margaret's Chapel |
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| View of southeast Edinburgh from the Castle. The hill in the distance is Holyrood Park, and the highest peak is Arthur's Seat. |
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| The New Barracks (I think), built in the late 1700s |
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| Royal Palace at Edinburgh Castle. For you history buffs, this is where James VI was born to Mary, Queen of Scots. |
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| Inside the Royal Palace |
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| In the Great Hall |
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| Scottish National War Memorial |
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| View of western Edinburgh from the castle. The modern building is the Conference Centre. |
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| Back of the castle, from below. |
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| Another view of the Castle from below. |
The Castle took us all morning. We then headed very slowly down the Royal Mile, stopping for lunch at "The Hub", pictured below. Here I had my introduction to Scottish hamburgers (insert obligatory McDonald's joke here). For those of you in North Carolina who complain that hamburgers are too well done due to state law, they are positively raw compared to the hockey pucks that serve as hamburgers in Scotland. Tip: if you are given a choice between a hamburger and haggis in Scotland, run away from the hamburger.
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| Strangely, this building is not a church and never has been. It was constructed between 1842 and 1845 as the Victoria Hall to house the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and is now "The Hub", which is the headquarters of the Edinburgh International Festival. |
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| More buildings on the Royal Mile |
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| St. Giles Cathedral (again) |
Our main activity was a tour of Mary King's Close. A "close" is a narrow alleyway between two streets, and this one was named after Mary King (whoever she was). The original alleyway was built in the 1500's the first several stories of the buildings were covered up when a new building was built in the 1700's. So, the buildings on the close are pretty much as they were before they were covered and built on top of. (Like the Seattle Underground Tour, if you are familiar with that). The good news is that the tour was really neat, especially the room where they kept the Plague victims. The bad news is that the won't let you take pictures. So I shamelessly ripped one off the web so you could see it.
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| Mary King's Close |
The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering down the upper half of the Royal Mile, looking and acting like tourists. Below are a few shots.
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| John Knox house (with the stairs on the right), built in the late 1400's. |
That pretty much ate up the afternoon, and the evening for that matter. We went back to the hotel to rest up for our trip to the Highlands and Skye.
Next: Scottish Highlands and Skye
