Friday morning I got up nice and early to have breakfast before meeting Liz and Dylan-- I went to a lovely little place called Chocolate Soup, where I had porridge for the first time, in addition to a lovely muffin and an absolutely fantastic hot chocolate. It was so rich that I actually couldn't finish it, which is unprecedented for me (though, in all fairness, it was pretty early in the morning, and between half of the muffin and half of the hot chocolate, my hands were shaking from the sugar rush that ensued).
The three of us met up and headed to Edinburgh Castle, which is kind of like the Tower of London, except built on a big hill o' volcanic rock. It has seven defensive gates, and has never been taken by a traditional storm (it was, however, taken by stealth once, and that was by the Scots, when they were trying to get it back from the English, who took it by some other interesting way...). It's very big, very old, contains the Crown Jewels of Scotland, was used as a prison... the list of similarities goes on and on.
The castle from very close up.
And from veeerrryy far away.
Since it was pouring rain, we decided to make the War Museum our first stop (yes, it's a whole museum contained in a very small part of the castle. The castle is BIG). Since I was traveling with history buffs, I spent more time in there than I normally would have, but it was still pretty interesting. My favorite discovery was that kilts were, for quite some time, a part of the Scottish military uniform-- even when serving abroad! In desert climates, they had to wear tan 'aprons' over the kilts so that they couldn't be easily picked out as targets by enemies. I'm not making this up. Also, these kilt-wearing Highland armies were (and probably still are) rather formidable forces to face, and gave English kings great cause for concern on several occasions.
Once it stopped raining, we took a twenty minute tour from a guide who pointed out the major buildings, as well as some quirky things of note-- such as the tiny Dog's Cemetery, which is the honored resting place of many regimental mascots and officers' pets.
The main part of the castle-- inside six of the seven defensive gates.
The chapel into which the War Memorial is built (the memorial is pretty fantastic).
Mons Meg-- a six ton cannon that shoots 300lb. cannonballs. Holy moly. It was given to the Scottish king with the intention of using it against the British; however, it was far to cumbersome to take into battle to serve that purpose. The king did find it rather useful for quelling some rebellions amongst his own subjects though...
Inside the Great Hall.
And I just thought this looked cool.
This is where the Crown Jewels live.... that's all there is to say about that, really.
Then we looked around the teeny tiny St. Margaret's Chapel, the oldest building in the castle-- built in 1050 or so; and after that, we took a look around the old dungeons, where many prisoners of war from nearly every country have been kept at some time or another-- of particular note was a shipful of American sailors during the Revolutionary War, under the command of John Paul Jones, the father of the American Navy.
Those hammocks actually look kind of comfy...though I bet it would be difficult to get your clothes to dry inside of a damp dungeon.
As we were heading out, we saw an incredibly large crowd gathered around part of the wall, so we worked our way up to the front to see what was going on. Turns out, everyone was waiting for the firing of the one o'clock gun; every day, a canon is fired from the castle at 1 pm, as has been the tradition since the 1800s, when it was used to signal ships in the nearby Firth of Fourth (I love Scottish alliteration). The gun went off with a surprisingly loud "bang," and it startled me so much that I actually made that shocked little "oh!" noise that my friends seem to find so amusing (apparently because it makes me sound old? not sure). Anyway, it was pretty cool-- our timing worked out quite nicely.
If you look closely, you can see that he's checking is pocketwatch, and that the clock behind him is at exactly 1:00.
Kaboom!
We had lunch at a very peculiar Mediterranean cafe-like thing, and then headed to the tourist office to get tickets for the literary pub crawl (yes-- another one!). And since the tourist office was right next to the enormous Walter Scott Memorial (the largest monument to a writer in the world), we decided to take a look around that for a bit.
Ok, I want to write something good enough to get a monument this big. Does epic blog writing count?
After checking out Sir Scott's ego-trip, we went back up to the castle area to see St. Giles' Cathedral. It was a beautiful cathedral, with some absolutely spectacular windows, including some that actually focused on scenes from my side of the Testaments, if you know what I mean.
Not sure if you can see this, but this window depicts Moses' life. I was pleased.
Post-cathedral, we took an afternoon break to go rest for a bit-- which was much needed by my poor feet. Of course, I did a tiny bit of browsing in the shops on my way back, which my feet didn't appreciate, but my shopaholic brain certainly did.
We met up again for dinner at six, at a small local pub that was really local. The food was Scottish, the customers Scottish, the accents Scottish-- and it was tasty. The food, that is-- not the Scots. Score two for Vanessa-- convincing her traveling companions to eat local food, and having them actually enjoy it.
After dinner, we made our way to the Grassmarket (a street with some shops and lots of funky local-type pubs) for the literary pub tour. After the amazingness that was the Dublin literary pub crawl, I was very excited to give this one a try, though a bit concerned because my knowledge of Scottish literature is paltry in comparison to that of Irish literature. This, of course, was not a problem at all-- the two actors who gave the tour (each representing one 'side' of Scottish literature/ authors-- the intellectual and the pub-loving) did a wonderful job of giving background information and performing snippets of work, and they were very funny as well. My particular favorite part of the tour was when they talked about Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (which occurred in an alley lit by a single streetlamp-- highly atmospheric)-- the story can either be read as a treatise on the dichotomy between the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh, or, more plausibly, as an embellishment on the tale of a member of high society in Edinburgh at the time-- a man who lived a double life (*dun dun duuuuuun*), or, I suppose, both.
The tour was not quite as amazing as the Dublin version, but it was still very enjoyable. We could have had better weather though-- we were sitting outside at one of the pubs, and the wind was so strong that a table umbrella went flying and almost took a guy out! Oh, and I tried my first whisky-- a sip of someone else's (I wasn't brave enough to order my own); it was.... strong. I think I don't have much of a taste for it. But when in Scotland, drink as the Scots do-- or, as that's probably not healthy, just drink what the Scots do, in smaller quantities.
So that just about wraps up the first real day in Edinburgh! Goodnight, dear readers-- and Happy Halloween!
No comments:
Post a Comment