7/6/17 – Edinburgh
Upon our arrival at Mortonhall, and since we were staying for several days, we decided to put up our awning room. It was the first time we had an opportunity to erect it since we bought it. We were a little nervous about remembering how to do it, but while we were slow, we succeeded.
Thursday we took bus number 11 out of Mortonhall and a twenty minute ride took us into our “hidden” city of Edinburgh. The city slowly revealed itself to us along the route climaxing with the dominating view of Edinburgh Castle up on Castle Rock.
We got off the bus.
And walked around the rock slowly making our way up to the castle itself. We were blown away by the rock on which the castle stands. It is the remains of an extinct volcano made of a type of very hard basalt rock that resists erosion. Rocky cliffs protect three sides of the castle and it was a nearly perfect defensive location to build a castle. As we walked around the Rock we ogled the cliffs making jokes about attackers failing to scale the cliffs. We later learned that in the 1300s, soldiers loyal to Robert the Bruce did successfully scale the cliffs and defeat the English who were holding the castle. Edinburgh Castle lays claim to being the most besieged castle in Great Britain with 26 sieges in its 1100 year history.
The castle grounds were fabulous with many sandstone buildings, round towers, cobbled walkways, the oldest building in Edinburgh: 12th Century St. Mary’s Chapel, the Scottish Crown Jewels and the magnificent Scottish National War Museum.
At one pm everyday, a really big, really loud cannon is shot off to the delight of visiting crowds, allowing citizens to check the accuracy of their watches and clocks – a tradition dating back 150 years for ships in the harbor to adjust their chronometers.
We walked part of the Royal Mile, the succession of streets running from the Castle to Hollyrood Palace (the official residence of the Queen – who happened to be in town and no, we didn’t get to have tea with her) but took a sharp left down the hill towards Princes Street where we found lunch at a Kebab shop. It is said these two streets are the busiest tourist streets in all of Edinburgh and boy, were they!
Friday we visited the Royal Brittania, the last royal yacht in service to the British monarch. It was decommissioned in 1997 after 43 years of service in a ceremony that I bet broke the Queen’s heart.
Entry fee included an excellent audio tour. It explained the history of the ship as well as how the crew and the Royal Family lived while aboard. It was very luxurious and yet comfortable at the same time. I read somewhere the Queen felt the Brittania was the only place she could really relax.
The ship is located at Ocean Terminal – a one hour bus ride from our campsite (we sat upstairs on the double decker bus and received a great tour of the city). We expected it to be on a dock much like the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA or the USS Midway in San Diego, CA but instead access was through a huge shopping mall. Our first stop was H&M. A couple of tops later we proceeded onward to the ship.
We are realizing that – much to our chagrin – we no longer have the stamina to put in 8-9-hour days of sightseeing. 5-6 hours is about our max so the Royal Brittania was our exclusive event for the day.
Saturday, our last in Edinburgh was filled with a walkabout. We wanted to see Sherlock Holmes, Greyfriars Bobby, more of the Royal Mile and Princes Gardens.
Returning from the Brittania yesterday we saw a pub named the Conan Doyle. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the author of Sherlock Holmes. We had been on the bus and missed the photo shot of the pub so we decided to return. A little research determined the pub was very near to where Sir Arthur was born and a little more research pointed us to a statue of Sherlock Holmes marking the birth spot.
Our next project was to find Greyfriars Bobby. This was a little terrier whose master died in the 1880s. Bobby held vigil at the grave for 14 years earning the respect and admiration of all who tried to chase him away. On his death he was buried in Greyfriars cemetery near his master. A statue of the dog commemorates his loyalty.
Following our tourist map was a bit tricky and as we navigated our way to Bobby, we came across Grassmarket a historic market place and current open air market. It has the oldest pub in Edinburgh, the White Hart Inn, and was notorious for daily hangings up to the 18th century. Passing by we walked down Candlemakers Way and into the entrance of Greyfriars Church with its large graveyard of weather beaten tombstones.
One newer marker was Bobby’s but we saw no statue. I was greatly disappointed; we split up to search better but with no success. I returned to the displayed map and finally saw that the memorial was outside the church walls. The statue was in front of a nicely appointed pub named Greyfriars Bobby. Once found, we waited our turn while a tour group of Italian teenagers got their photos with the pooch.
We began walking uphill towards the Royal Mile and suddenly we came across The Elephant House – the very tea and coffee shop where J.K. Rowlings wrote the first couple of Harry Potter books. That was a welcome surprise!
Reaching the Royal Mile we detoured into St. Giles church at Parliament Square, just in time to listen to a choral concert and take photos of the lovely stained glass windows. We decided not to visit Holyrood Palace – which was just as well since it was closed due to the Queen’s presence – and walked down to the Scott Monument, honoring Sir Walter Scott. The prolific author is obviously held in high regard; the monument is the largest monument to a writer in the world.
We walked the Princes Gardens and right into the Scottish National Gallery, a splendid neo-classic building with an impressive collection of great works by Scottish and foreign artists. I love me an art museum and if it hadn’t the last stop in a long day I would have stayed for a longer time. At it was, I saw paintings by John Constable, Raphael and Leonardo, among others.
Finally, we hopped on our bus #11 and returned to the camping where we took down the awning room in preparation for Sunday’s departure.
Our new found German friends from St. Andrews, Ingrid and Hans, were staying in the same campground. After our respective dinners we got together and spent a couple of hours chatting and sharing travel stories.
We love visiting the great cities of the world and Edinburgh definitely belongs in that category. Our three days were packed with attractions and we just scratched the surface. With more time and knowledge we would have covered more ground and enjoyed it on an even deeper level.
Bruce N' Peg 