It feels like Groundhog’s Day, for yet again, Chris got up at 4:00 am to travel back to St. Andrews to play another course. When in Scotland…Golf! Shane and I had other plans. We were hitting the pavement to tour the city that was bustling around our hotel. Unfortunately, we missed the am departure and hit the after lunch crowd. Shane has been a trooper as long as he fuels up on lots of sleep. Okay by me, he is here with us and I am so very thankful that he is experiencing the sights and sounds of this glorious city. He was my translator for all the Latin inscriptions on buildings and monuments and it was certainly much more fun to have a partner! I will not bore you with text but show you instead what we saw today…and we did not even put a dent in all that Edinburgh has to offer!
Edinburgh Castle rises from the stony cliffs and presides over all of Edinburgh. We are being hosted at a dinner there tonight for which I cannot wait!
The Scott Monument~ Shane questioned as we drove into the city and saw this from afar, ” What is the building that looks like a drippy castle?” We walked up the 287 steps to climb the “drippy castle” and it was worth it for the views were fantastic.
I do have to say that the stairs were quite narrow for this is a view of the wider section going down. You literally had to press yourself against the wall to let people by going in the opposite direction.
View of of Princes Street, the main street in Edinburgh into the heart of the New City as they call it in Edinburgh. The heart of the city is basically referred to as the old and the new. The new being around 300 years old. You can only guess what the age of the old is!
Monument on Calton Hill which is Edinburgh’s first public park that overlooks the city. As you can see it was quite a gray day so I hope to capture better views on Thursday. It is called the Acropolis of the North for there are all sorts of monuments built up here that resemble the Acropolis in Greece.
We did not see the interiors of any buildings today except for the Public Records building, circa early 1700’s, which had an incredible domed ceiling where Wedgewood medallions were interspersed in the ceiling…beautiful!
We passed by lots of iron work gates where tiny alley ways led off in the distance.
Flowers were a reoccurring theme that beautified so many surfaces and gave light to this gray city on a gray day.
The pictures from our dinner at the castle will not transfer from my phone to the computer so they will have to wait.
Until tomorrow~
Meg
