I awoke to a spectacular blue sky day in Edinburgh – only slightly more likely than one in Ireland apparently. And as it was outside my window, the castle was my first tourist attraction to tackle. I decided that if I was going to visit a proper castle (Blarney being more a ruin than a walled castle arrangement) then Edinburgh Castle would be the perfect choice so I climbed the steps across the road from the hotel than took me to the castle forecourt. It alone provided spectacular views over Edinburgh. The charge was 11 pounds (except that with the VAT reduction, it was 10 pound and some silly number of pence. This actually worked out really well for me because it gave me a chance to get rid of some change. Grappling with working out different money doesn’t lend itself to paying with the correct change. Consequently I think there is at least a kilo of foreign change in my carry-on luggage. They don’t exchange anything less than a Euro either.)
The castle was quite spectacular, and probably more interesting for military history buffs than myself. As well as the Museum of the Royal Guards, it also houses Edinburgh’s war memorial, which is inside the castle’s spectacular chapel. There was also a fantastic prisoners of war exhibition as this was where the prisoners from the American war of Independence were held. Apparently some prisoners captured just off the coast during the second world war were also house here temporarily but reportedly in more hospitable conditions. The war memorial, predictably, was off limits to cameras, as were the Scottish crown jewels, also housed here. So now I’ve seen a real crown and apparently the colour of fabric inside the crown actually denotes the country’s religion – the purple catholic velvet was replaced at some point with the red protestant one. Interesting when you think that in Asia red is a colour of luck and prosperity and purple the colour associated with dearth. Green just seems to be associated with Ireland (and the environmental movement more recently). It doesn’t seem like anyone has taken ownership of orange so I guess it belongs wholeheartedly to the modern marketing of mobile phones, financial institutions and supermarkets.
Along with two cafes, two gift shops and a book shop, you can also walk through an exhibition about the kings and queens of Scotland, through the royal apartments, where a woman dressed in period costume was giving a talk on the life of women in the castle and the Great Hall. The hall was quite spectacular, although, unfortunately they were restoring the ceiling when I visited and the scaffolding obscured the grandeur.
By far my favourite part of the castle (apart from obviously the cannons on the battlements, was the dog’s graveyard. In A testament to the high regard in which the Scottish Royal Guard hold their working dogs, there is a graveyard just below the top of the castle where the dogs are buried. While I imagine the remains of some ancients may lie here, this was the obly graveyard I saw at the castle.
From the castle I took a walk along the infamous golden mile, which had probably more souvenir shops than Temple Bar in Dublin. And there were varying degrees of quality, which could easily be judged by the price being charged for a kilt. They went all the way from a bargain-basement 20 pounds (with bright tartan likely woven in India and a free sporon) to hundreds of pounds for the genuine article weaved in the highlands and individually tailored.
I had been warned before I arrived but the Scottish don’t like to take English money (they print their own Scottish notes at the Royal Bank of Scotland). It wasn’t too much of a problem because I was almost out of cash anyway. I had more issues, mostly good-natured jibes – when using Scottish money in England. One or two people have been reluctant to take it after the RBS stocks crashed recently. I found it funny that they use English money in Northern Ireland but the Scotts actually prefer their own money.
It seems the Scottish are disputing the Lapland claim to Christmas (probably because of the tartan thing) – I found two shops selling quality Christmas decorations and paraphernalia along the Golden Mile. What I didn’t find was very many places to eat that weren’t owned by Starbucks. Eventually I stopped at a little café and decided on a baked potato with coleslaw and a side salad. I had been eating far too much really stodgy food and wanted something a little bit healthier. I chose the potato because at least if the salad was crap, I had something to eat. The salad was OK in the end – iceberg lettuce, a couple of Spanish olives and some beetroot. Now I’m well known as being a condiment queen and I’m pretty liberal with the condiments but I swear there was more coleslaw dressing on the coleslaw than there wss vegetables in it. And on top of that it had a big dollop of yoghurt dressing on top. It’s all well and good to ask me whether I want skim milk in my tea but why bother when you serve this with it?
After finishing the salad and some of the potato (once I scraped the heart attack-inducing condiments off it), I continued on my way down the Ryal Mile darting up and down the side lanes off it and eventually finding my way back to the main road. I passed at least four pickup piints for ghost tours and also discovered Real Mary King’s Close where quite a bit of the haunting is said to take place. As I ventured closer to the Queen’s residence in Edinburgh, Holyrood House, I was reminded that this isn’t just a tourist attraction, people actually do live here. At the bottom of the Golden Mile, opposite the modern Scottish parliament building were a number of rows of quite modest housing. A plaque nearby said that they were government housing supplied for war veterans. I was impressed that this type of housing was found here, within a couple of hundred metres of the Queen’s residence.
I walked around the outside of the Place – you had to pay tio go on a tour and I believe most of that was in the museum anyway. There’s also an impressive park (with what looks like a volcano covered in grass, near the palace. Although, I think you could keep pretty fit in Edinburgh just jogging around the streets – the area around the old city and the Golden Mile is quite steep and there are a lot of stairs – no wonder they built catacombs beneath the city.
From here I wandered back to the hostel through the streets and laneways off the Golden Mile and collected my gear. I had booked a reservation on the train to London at 3pm when I arrived in Edinburgh – the nice gentleman at the station hadn’t charged me anything for it either. I had wanted to stay until later in the day but didn’t really want to arrive in London at 11pm or later – it was Friday so all the trains leaving between 4pm and 7pm were pretty heavily booked. The bonus was that for the first half of the journey tro Newwcastle I had a spare seat next to me for all my junk. And, not only did the express service to London have power, it also had free wi-fi. It gave me a good chance to catch up on my blogging.
