After sleeping in a little, breakfast was had at the hostel café. It was a little overpriced, but it was better than starting the day on an empty stomach. Edinburgh Castle was already drawing a crowd when we arrived 15 minutes before opening. The morning was kicked off by the daily bagpipe reveille from a guard wearing the whole kilted getup. I thought the guard was very brave to accommodate the circle of Taiwanese tourists that took turns dashing forward to have their picture taken with him. The longer he played, the more impatient the tourists became, and the closer the circle approached. While they were distracted, Hans and I noticed the castle doors had been opened and we abandoned the hapless guard to go inside. The ticket line only took a few minutes and we joined the second free guided tour of the day.
I was glad that we did not try to visit the castle as well as the museum yesterday afternoon because we spent a solid three hours here. We saw Scotland’s crown jewels (the oldest complete collection in Europe), the Stone of Scone (the magical coronation stone stolen by the English and “loaned” back to the Scots), the Scottish war memorial, the exquisite hammerbeam ceiling in the great hall (originally made without nails), the POW prisons, an exhibit dedicated to the Scottish cavalry (my favorite being the Scots Grays), the Scottish war museum, and a bunch of other galleries. The oldest part of the castle (and all of Edinburgh) is St. Margaret’s Chapel. It was small but impressive and it turns out that you can hire it for weddings! There was a small cemetery for dogs belonging to soldiers and some very pretty landscaping. At 1 pm a cannon is fired to mark the time. It is an event that draws a large crowd, apparently.
When this ceiling was first made no nails were used!
Inspecting Mons Meg, the decommissioned 6-ton cannon
St. Margaret's Chapel
Looking towards St. Giles, the 1 O'clock cannon
The front of the castle
After we'd had enough Castle, we ate lunch at a pub in the Grassmarket neighborhood and sampled some more ales (I had the cider, which surpasses anything I’ve had in America). We climbed all 283 steps to the top of the Scott Monument for some magnificent city viewing (as the sun had come out) and ended our afternoon at the National Gallery of Scotland for the last hour it was open.
The view north and north-east
Inside the chapel half-way up the monument inside
We were pretty tired at this point but we took a leisurely walk back to the hostel, first wandering up one of the streets in New Town, which has some of the best-preserved Georgian streets in Europe. After a break at the hostel we checked out the nearby Tesco and decided to buy groceries for breakfast tomorrow to save a bit of money. Dinner was had at an excellent pub with a few ales and (relatively) cheap food. Hans had mushroom risotto and I just had an appetizer: fried brie with cranberry chutney. We shared each other’s meal and decided to spring for a dessert. That proved to be fairly disappointing. It included a fried sort of cookie that tasted a bit like fish sticks and I suspect it is because they used old frying oil. Fish-cookie aside, the meal was satisfactory. Before returning to the hostel for the night, Hans suggested we climb Calton Hill one more time. On the dark hillside under the lit-up National Monument, we gazed at the lighted castle about two miles away and the shadow of Holyrood Park. It was a cool evening and at one time a firework was set off not far behind us. It was an excellent end to our last full day in Edinburgh. Tomorrow begins the Great Experiment when we will rent a car and learn what it’s like to drive on the other side of the road.
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