October 2014 - Scotland

Warning:  This one's a long one....

We've wanted to go to Scotland for a while.  This year the opportunity presented itself and we took it.  We decided to make Edinburgh our home base for a week.  AAVacations had a really good package that included our airfare and a week at the Waldorf Astoria.  The location was fantastic and the hotel was very nice.

We flew from Dallas to London Heathrow (aka the Gateway to Europe.  In the US, you have to go through Atlanta.  To get anywhere in Europe from Dallas, you have to go through Heathrow).  We had a healthy layover so we stopped and got breakfast.  I decided on a full English breakfast.  It came with sausage, bacon, eggs, toast, tomatoes, mushrooms and baked beans.  I didn't eat it all, I swear.  It was pretty good, though. 

We finally landed in Edinburgh about 4pm.  By the time we collected our bags, caught a taxi and checked in to the hotel it was pretty late.  We decided to have a celebratory drink and a snack (because I hadn't eaten enough?).

 

The hallway of our hotel.  Can anyone say "Redrum!"

This is us with our hotel in the background.  If you've read any of my blog entries you will know that I love all things historical and monuments that are lit up at night, among other things.  This city had it all.

Edinburgh Castle looms over the city and can be seen from all over.  This was one of the first things we saw outside our hotel.  It's gorgeous.

 

I'm going to warn you now.  Edinburgh Castle is like the Eiffel Tower and the Washington Monument.  You can't stop taking its picture.

After walking around for a bit, we settled for the Amber Rose.  The bar was located in the basement of the building.

They wanted to know if I wanted the "small" or "large" wine.  Seriously?

 

A view of our neighborhood on the way back to the hotel.  The building with the gold lights is our hotel.  The building that's lit up in blue is St. John's Episcopalian Church.  

In every city we visit we always look for a city tour, preferably a "Hop on/hop off" deal so that we can get a ride to the places we want to see.  Edinburgh was no different.  The tour took us around for about an hour.  Then we got off at Edinburgh Castle.

 

It's been a royal castle since the 12th century.  It's not very livable in my opinion.  We visited the rooms where Mary, Queen of Scots gave birth to her son, James VI (aka James I of England).  I must say, not very cozy.  Still, it was very cool.

It just wouldn't be a Chaney vacation unless we had one of these goofy photos where John just pokes his head up into my photo...

 

The views from the castle were fantastic.  The water is the Forth of Firth (try saying that three times fast after a large wine!).

Another view of the city from the castle.  It was crazy windy up there.  I was almost blown over...seriously!  It was bright and sunny like this and then the clouds blew over and it started to rain.  It was more like a light mist.

 

When the rain stopped, we were rewarded with this fantastic rainbow.

 

These guys were doing some kind of exhibition.  I assume they were supposed to be soldiers stationed in the castle.  I'm not sure what they were doing but they kept yelling at one another.  Still, guys in skirts on a windy day...how can you go wrong?

 

We decided to walk home and, of course, it rained.  But then all the buildings lit up and we got this lovely view.

 One more peek of the castle through the trees.

View of "old town" from Prince's Street.

My first dinner in Edinburgh.  We had dinner at a pub and I got the "Balmoral chicken".  It's chicken breast wrapped in bacon and stuffed with haggis.  It was quite lovely.  There was only a little haggis in it.

 

John got a chicken and mushroom pie.  It was very tasty.

 

Day 2 in Edinburgh and we decided to walk to the Palace of Holyroodhouse (or Holyrood Palace).  Traveling to Europe in the fall is the best.  There were practically no people here.  So this is the official residence of the Queen when she comes to the capital city.  The two towers to the left contain the rooms of Mary, Queen of Scots.  We got climb up the hidden stairs and see the secret rooms.  Unfortunately, no photographs inside.

 

The requisite selfie in front of the palace.

The ruins of the abbey attached to the palace.

 

The view from the Queen's backyard.  That's called Arthur's Seat.  You can climb up there if you are so inclined.  We were not.  We could see people up there milling around. 

Another one of the Queen's backyard.  Nice, no?

Goofing around.

This is the Scottish Parliament building opened in 2004 and cost way more than anticipated. 

 

We hoofed it back to the hotel for a quick break and then we went to the Prince's Street Gardens.  Holy moly!  It was beautiful.  Here's a view of the castle from the garden.  The gardens used to be a loch (that's a lake to you and me, kids) but it was drained and the land reclaimed to make these fabulous gardens.

Hanging out on a beautiful day in the Prince's Street Gardens.

 

This cute little house is the gardener's cottage.  This is where they store all the equipment to maintain the gardens.  I wish we could have gone in.  It looks really cute.

 

The Ross fountain in the Prince's Street Gardens.

 

Next stop, The Scottish National Gallery.  All the museums in Scotland are free.  That's pretty cool because there are a bunch of them!  The historic houses and castles have entrance fees but they are very reasonable.  Unfortunately, no photos.  Ugh!

 

This lovely building is in "Old Town" and is the Bank of Scotland.  I think now they store the Scottish records there.  Old Town and New Town are divided by Prince's Street Garden.  The city of Edinburgh used to have a wall around it that went from the castle to about 3/4 of the way down the Royal Mile to the Palace.  The Palace was outside the walled city.

A pre-dinner drink in our hotel bar.  The hotel was fantastic.  However, I don't think this city is prepared to make mixed drinks.  The night before we ordered martinis.  Huge mistake.  It took forever!  After that, we only ordered beer and wine. 

Dinner the second night was at a Turkish restaurant.  I got Scottish seabass that was awesome.  I also tried some Turkish wine.

John got a chicken dish that was crazy good.  

So some basic observations:  I didn't hear very many Scottish accents.  Edinburgh is quite the melting pot.  There were lots of Eastern Europeans here.  We went to a Scotch distillery with another couple that was from Corsica.  We were one of the few people wearing sunglasses.  Even on a cloudy day if it's bright, I have to wear sunglasses.  A lot of the women wore shorts with pantyhose.  Not a good look but that's just my opinion.  Of course, that opinion is colored by the fact that I couldn't get away with that without someone laughing so hard they hurt themself.  And finally, the funky hair color is very popular here.  We saw a guy with purple hair, several women with fiery red hair and one girl with blue hair.  Not all these people were young either....

 

We took a tour of a Scottish distillery.  We had a bit of a ride to get out there.  This is one of the villages that we passed through.

The Scotch distillery we toured was called Glenkinchie.  It was pretty cool and I'm not a Scotch person.  They wouldn't let us take photos in the actual distillery.  Our guide was fantastic.  He explained the whole process, which I found fascinating.  At the end of the tour, we got to taste four kinds of Scotch.  By then I was too looped to remember to pull out the camera. 

The distillery had a coach service that picked us up and took us back to Edinburgh.  This was a shot of the Scottish countryside.  Everything was very green there, even though it was October.  The temperature was in the 50's.  Most days were slightly overcast but for the most part, the weather was great.

The coach dropped us off at Calton Hill.  They have all these really cool monuments there.  We climbed the incredibly steep stairs to get up there only to be blown around by the wind.  It was ridiculously windy up there which made it colder than cold.  I could only stay up there long enough to take a couple of photos.  This is the observatory.

This is the Nelson Monument, a tribute to Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson for his victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.  You can see these monuments from various vantage points throughout the city.

 

The Dugald Stewart Monument.

 

This is the Governor's house (the round castle looking thing).  The obelisk is a monument to five political martyrs.  

 

On the walk back to the hotel I took this photo.  I was shocked by the number of spires.  The one with the clock is the Balmoral Hotel, which is supposed to be super swanky.  The second one is the monument to Sir Walter Scott.  He's a superhero in this town.

Every morning we had breakfast buffet in the hotel.  This particular morning I was accosted by one of the cooks who was out in the buffet area (I think he was excited to talk to someone from the US since he was coming out here in a couple of weeks).  Once he found out I was from the US, he was my new best friend.  He pointed out the items I should try because they were Scottish.  I couldn't let him down so I decided to be brave and taste whatever he told me to put on my plate.  The burnt looking thing is blood pudding.  I didn't care for that too much.  It didn't really taste like anything but the texture was a bit weird.  Next to that is haggis.  That tasted a bit like hash.  It wasn't bad but I wouldn't purposely order it.  I did find that haggis was on a lot of things.  I actually saw haggis nachos.  The last item was a Cumberland sausage.  Now this was pretty good.  Not quite like our sausage but good just the same.

We decided on Wednesday to just hang around Edinburgh.  We'd planned on going to Glasgow for a day trip but, according to the weather app, it was raining there.  So this is the monument to Sir Walter Scott.  Walter Scott was an 18th century novelist.  He wrote Rob Roy, among other things. 

Right next to our hotel were two churches.  One was St. John's, which I mentioned earlier.  The other was St. Cuthbert's which is a Presbyterian church.  It's situated in the middle of a graveyard.  As you can see, even from the graveyard, you can see the castle.

 

Here's a photo of the actual church from Prince's Street.  It was closed to the public on the day that we went wandering around down there.

Here's another shot of the graveyard with St. John's in the background.

From the church, we headed over to the Grassmarket.  Back in the day (around 1477) this was a marketplace where people would sell livestock.

In the mid-1600's this is where they held public executions.  This was actually entertainment.  Families would come and watch.  Gruesome!

Maggie Dickson was the last woman to be hanged here.  And now there's a pub named after her.  Lovely.  I should have gone in for a drink but it was pretty early in the morning.  Even I have standards.  No drinking before...noonish?

This is St. Giles church.  Rumor has it that both Martin Luther and John Knox preached here.  So they were part of the "reformation".  They pulled away from the Catholic Church to form the Presbyterian Church.

One of the stained glass windows inside St. Giles.  The inside of the church was gorgeous.

The inside of St. Giles Church.  It was really pretty.  Parts of this church date back to 1124!  Good grief.  I have to admit that I'm a bit confused about the religion in Scotland.  I've read about Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I and how they didn't want to be part of the Roman Catholic Church but there was a lot going on then.  I'll need to read more.  Regardless, this is an amazing looking church.

 

This place is called the Georgian House.  It's a 18th century townhome that has been restored.  This used to be the 'burbs for Edinburgh.  Once the bridge was built across the loch that is now the Prince's Street Gardens, the wealthy people moved over here where they had more room.  This house belonged to a wealthy landowner.  There were docents in all the rooms.  The one lady that was down in the kitchen gave us a wealth of historical information on how both halves lived (the servants and the residents).  Unfortunately, no photos inside.  This place was a surprise.  I didn't expect that it would be as interesting as it turned out to be.

Outside the Georgian House.

St. Mary's Cathedral.  So, according to Wikipedia, this is a Roman Catholic Church.  According to the signage outside, the Church of Scotland has taken over.  *Sigh*

 

Dinner!  I had a Scottish burger.  It had a fried egg and haggis in the burger along with cheddar cheese.  Plus it was on a really good bun.  It was pretty good.

John got Scottish lobster. 

 

This is just a random goofy picture.  There was this elegant staircase that led down to the lobby of our hotel.  I thought it would be cool to get our photo on the staircase.  That's us in the mirror.

This was just me killing time while John was getting ready to go.  I saw my reflection in the mirror and I thought the reflections of reflections looked kind of cool.

John swears this Land Rover Defender was following him around taunting him.  Now he wants one of these.  *Sigh*

  

The next day we decided to do a day trip to Glasgow, which was a hour by train.  One of the cities we passed through was Linlithgow.  I wanted to stop there and see the castle.  But then there it was!  Linlithgow Castle.  It's where Mary, Queen of Scots was born.  It's pretty much in ruins at this point but still pretty cool.

 

Central Train Station in Glasgow.  We picked up the hop on/hop off tour thinking it would only take an hour.  We grossly underestimated the traffic in this city.  It's much more spread out than Edinburgh.  It took an hour and a half to make the full circuit.  We should have hopped off at the first opportunity.  

 

The Clyde River.

 

This is a music hall.  They call it the "armadillo".  It's supposed to be nested ship hulls.

 

The bridge over the River Clyde - they call it the Arch.

 

Glasgow University.

Glasgow Cathedral.   We walked (yes, walked) all the way over here from the other side of town.  It was over a mile, which doesn't sound like much but it sure felt like a lot.  We got there too late to go in.  The cemetery in the back is modeled after Pere Lachaise in Paris. 

It think it was quitting time in Glasgow.  This was a pedestrian mall in the center of town near the train station.  OH!  And they had an Apple store set in this century old building.  That just didn't seem right.  Glasgow was a lot different than Edinburgh, in my opinion.  I felt like Glasgow was more modern and much more congested.  The traffic was unbelievable.  It was like Dallas traffic, almost.  Overall, it was a nice day trip.

 

Last day in Edinburgh.   This is Canongate Kirk built in 1688.  It sits in the middle of a cemetery.

 

Calton Hill from the cemetery at Canongate Kirk.

 

We didn't get to see the Military Tattoo, which is a pipe and drum core that is amazing.  They only perform during August.  But this was a busker.  This girl was playing for tips.  She was quite good, too.  I was going to get my photo with her but then these guys were taking their photos with her and it just got weird.  I just took her photo and tipped her.  Not once did she stop playing.  The monuments in the back are the Scot Monument and the Balmoral Hotel.

 

Wine?  Yes, please.  Let me save you the trouble of refilling my glass, bring me the large...

Last lunch in Scotland.  I got a BLT and a cup of chilli (that's how they spell it).  So a quick note about the bacon.  It's not like our bacon.  It's more like Canadian bacon.  It's also not crispy.  It is, however, good.  Now, I know what you're thinking.  Chilli?  In Scotland?  Are you mad?  I have to say, I expected it to suck, which is why I got the sandwich as well.  Imagine my surprise when it was actually very good.  I've had worse chili in Dallas.  Yes, I just said that!

John got this seafood soup that was almost like a chowder.  It was called Cullen Skink.  It had haddock, potatoes, leeks, garlic and cream.  It was really good.

Goodbye, Scotland!  We had a fantastic time!!  One last goodbye rainbow courtesy of Edinburgh, Scotland.

One last quick comment - We went to Gladstone's Land, which is an 18th century building where each floor is broken up into apartments.  The museum shows how people lived in that time, similar to the Georgian House.  So this young Scottish girl - early 20's - is telling us how people lived.  We're in the kitchen, there's no plumbing.  There's a potty chair and the bowl has to be dumped every day.  So the lazy 18th century people toss it from the window instead of taking it down.  They shout "gurdie-loo!" and that basically means, look out below.  You know I'll be working that into conversation.

Then she has a little jar that she uncaps and hands to us.  These are smells of an 18th century kitchen.  "Go ahead," she says encouragingly.  "It doesn't smell like poo." 

That's my best memory of Scotland and my advice to you.  "Go ahead, it doesn't smell like poo."