Scotland!!!

Whew! Just loading all of these pictures took forever! You may need to take this one over a couple of days. I'm hoping that those of you have said you're enjoying the pictures weren't lying. :). We've been in Scotland for a few days by now, and we are freezing! At least, I am freezing. Dane loves it so much.
He also loves that our hotel room here is about 4x the size of the one in London. It's a cute little hotel, Indian themed, just outside of the city centre of Edinburgh.








The key is an old-fashioned skeleton type key, and at first Dane found it awesome, and then realized that they are harder to use.




This is the breakfast spread...




...and here is where we eat it.




Ok! Off to our first day of adventures. We spent most of our first day at Edinburgh Castle. It is up on a massive hill. We got off the bus and the first thing we saw was this massive moment to Sir Walter Scott. It has the characteristically Scottish look of something well weathered by the ever present mist and fog (which is my attempt to nicely say that everything looks a little mildewy here).




We had walked no more than 100 yards down the street, and saw that the fog was crazy thick! This is the same monument as the last picture.




I wish we had taken a picture of how steep the hill that we climbed was, but we didn't. We did get a picture of this adorable little apartment building.




At the top end of what is called the Royal Mile of Edinburgh is this amazing castle. It's bigger than it looks- you can't see half of it right now through the fog.




But these guys are out front keeping it safe. :)




I thought it was cold, but Dane explained to me that I was being a wuss (conveniently forgetting his heat meltdown).




Oh, these guys are also guarding the main gate. McGonagall could bring them to life if she wanted to.



This is inside the first gate but there are still a couple more to go before we are actually inside the castle. You can't be too careful; people trying to get in were probably not bringing cookies.




The portcullis gate! It makes me think of The Princess Bride.



And we are finally in!



These are the Lang (or long) stairs.



When the wall just kind of fades into the rock like this, it makes it seem like the wall is fake, like it's at Disneyland or something and one has just sort of blended into the other. And then I'm reminded that this place is 1000 years old and that it's not fiberglass or something like that.


In many of the pictures you will see headphones on our heads. We decided to invest in the audio guides, and it was the best 3 quid we've spent. There was SO much information. Right at the start, there were these red flags that gave a brief overview of some period of history at the castle. Dane spent almost an hour listening to all of them before we even really saw anything inside.








I don't think any of the pictures really capture how cool the view was from the castle (it's above the whole city) but I'm going to post a bunch of them anyway.







Again, an awesome view but filled with fog.










This was in the national war museum, which is on the castle grounds. These were recruitment posters for the Scottish regiments of the army.




Dane took this picture, I think because he liked the swords.


I hadn't known before how the Paralympics had started.



Across town from where we were there is something called Nelson's column, and aside from being a monument, it is also a time keeping device in that it has a ball that drops everyday at 1 pm. It was built back before everyone had watches. As you noticed, though, there is a slight problem with fog in this place, so to help people know when it was 1, they added a sound signal, the 1 o'clock gun. Since the early 19th century, a cannon has been fired every day but Sunday at 1. It was loud.







Dane is still so impressed by the phone's panorama function. This is a view from the castle.




And a view facing the castle.



In addition to the history of war museum, there were other smaller museums dedicated to specific Scottish regiments and groups in the British military.






That guy is walking around in a kilt! even though I've seen quite a few men in kilts here, it's still amusing to me.




This is right in the middle of the castle.


Behind me is the war memorial. It was built as a shrine to those who died in WWI (the inscriptions read The Great War), but names of those who have died in wars since have been added to the books of names inside.








This a cemetery for soldiers' dogs. I'm not kidding.



This is Mons Meg. It is giant, and is responsible for the castle not being taken by any invaders after its arrival.



This is why my mother should not come to Scotland (sorry mom; but I love you!) Dane keeps freaking it because I keep tripping on all the uneven ground EVERYWHERE. The buses going over roads like this are scary, too.






I don't know if you could read that plaque above, but it explains that this building, St. Margaret's chapel is the oldest in Edinburgh. It's tiny. The door is tiny. I'm not even sure Grant could get through it.



It's hard to see this, but this is a stained glass window of William Wallace.



This is the whole chapel.



And see the door? it's so short!




I am sitting above the portcullis gate in the Argyll tower. I like the curtains.



Fun facts about the tower.



Argyll's last views. Except for all the modern city stuff.







The war memorial again. it's just so pretty.



So many guns on all sides of the castle. These are on the east side, which was the most vulnerable because it was the only one that didn't end at a sheer cliff.




This is the entrance to the war memorial. We have a video of the guards changing, but I can't put it on my blog until I figure out how to link YouTube to it.




After the memorial, went in to see the Scottish crown jewels. We'd kept hearing about how Walter Scott discovered the hidden crown jewels, and when we got here we found out that he 'discovered' them in the exact spot where they had been hidden and all the records indicated they should be. it was a little anticlimactic. But they were pretty. No photos allowed.

This room is the great hall of the castle. see the barred window in the top right corner? That was a spy window for the king to use to be a creeper and make sure no one was plotting agains him.




The only thing in this room that is actually medieval is this timber ceiling. Everything else is Victorian, because Queen Victoria thought Scotland was romantic and beautiful and wanted to spruce up Edinburgh castle a bit.



Why not decorate with weaponry?











The carved screen was so beautiful!



My favorite is the swirly one in the middle.


One of the coolest parts of the castle was the prison of war exhibit. Part of the castle was used to hold POWs during the American revolution and wars with France. You can see names and dates carved into the doors from that time.







It's a little hard to see, but they have fixed up the rooms the way they were when prisoners were held here. They were actually treated quite humanely.








here was a record of what they would be given to eat.



If you can't read the bottom of this sign, it explains different pieces of graffiti carved into the prison doors. The bottom one explains that an American (or colonial rebel, as the British thought of them) was held here and carved what was then the pattern of the flag into the door.



Here. I can touch it. How cool is that?



1781.



This was a section about prison crafting, some of which was more devious than others. This was a straw box, painstakingly decorated and lovely.


These were counterfeit money dies made from bones left over from prisoners' meals.



I forget what it is called, but you now that craft that involves rolling up tiny pieces of paper? That's how this jewelry box was decorated.








This was the prisoners' exercise yard.


More graffiti, likely by a sailor.




The facilities.



And the site of an attempted escape. 40 or so POWs made ropes out of sheets and clothing, blasted a hole in the wall and tried to escape. The first man out fell to his death below, and everyone else was just captured in the yard because they didn't want to die.



Until the 19th century, flogging was an acceptable punishment for soldiers who were convicted of some kind of misconduct. However, society started to frown on the idea of physical beating as punishment, so they had to come up with a military prison. This was it.















Look, the fog cleared ever so slightly and we tried to take a picture to show what we could now see!



A lot of the streets are cobbled and mossy like this.



The view.


After about 5 hours here, it was time to call it a day.




Oh you mean this gate key.


Bye, castle! We had fun!








There are several street performers here, all in kilts, all playing bagpipes. These were, by far, our favorites.



We have no idea what this is. Sometimes here you just turn a corner and out pops a medieval ruin.


Italian for dinner.




I love spaghetti pescatore!


Day 2! Dane finally sat in the big chair.







See the elephant? see the window behind it? That's our room.




This is Holyrood Palace, the queens Scottish residence. We were going to tour it, but we can't because it's closed. It's only closed when the royal family is there.






On the agenda for today? Go to Holyrood Park and climb the hill to Arthur's Seat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur%27s_Seat,_Edinburgh

Here's a description of that.

From a distance and at the bottom, it didn't look too bad.



When we got a little closer, we started to wonder if we should have brought snacks.



100 yards up the hill, we realized it would take a while.



What is going to follow now is a series of pictures that will probably all look basically the same to you. Every time we stopped to look out, we were quite impressed with our progress and the sheer magnitude of what we could see (and I have no idea how much our pictures really capture that). So, here is a record of our hike.



















These were such a bright purple! and filled with giant bumble bees that were freaking me out.











It was not as foggy as the day before had been, but it was still pretty cloudy, especially the higher we got.



And colder.



Except that it was also a lot of work to walk straight up the side of the cliff, so it was hot as well as cold.











Those cliffs were pretty cool. Remember the falling rocks sign? That sign was at the bottom of them.







We're so close! And it looks like we will walk off the hill into nothingness.



SOOOO FOGGY.



and still freezing.






A nice girl from UCLA offered to take our picture. One of the few we'll have of both of us.



We thought we were done, but we were mistaken.




We found a Hobbit at the top of the hill. At least, that's the only explanation I have for why this yahoo is not wearing shoes.


I've made it! And I can't see a thing!




Me too, and me neither!



Why don't we go down this side of the hill instead of the one we came up? I think I just saw people disappear into the fog in that direction (this is really what I said; Dane wasn't thrilled, but it's good for him to take risks and try new things).



See, there's ground here. We won't just fall into nothingness.



And look! The walk down this side, while windier because it's facing the ocean, is much shorter!



And grassier.














Wow! We were just up there! It looks so far away now.




This was close to the bottom.







This is the only loch we made it to.



This is the back of Holyrood Palace. It looks like there is some kind of ruin attached to the back.



After our hike, since it was still not raining (the forecast wasn't good, but We'd been lucky so far) we headed down to the waterfront to walk around. We hopped on a bus (the buses here are not super friendly to visitors; you are just supposed to know what bus stops are where without any signage. we're figuring it out though) and went down to this little fishing town.







The ocean was beautiful, and the islands we could see looked charming.







This place made us laugh. Read the sign.



This was a cute, strange little park. Dane tried to jump up and click his heels. he thinks the picture is bad because I'm bad at timing pictures. I assert that this is just what it looked like.



We have one more day in Scotland, but it's supposed to pour all day. We'll have to find inside things to do.

If you made it all the way through this crazy long post, I'm impressed! and Thanks!
cheers!
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