We woke up to another day with no rain. Our weather karma has held well. We had some breakfast and then headed off for a small group walking tour of Edinburgh. Dick is great at choosing routes that are efficient but also take us down roads that we hadn’t gone on before. We walked along a major street and cut through a beautiful park. We were enchanted with some street art, including sculptures that we think are pigeons, but we are the size of large chickens, as well as a couple of beautiful giraffes full-size . There were a number of beautiful monuments and fountains as we walked through this old beautiful city. We were walking along the park, looking up at the castle. Dick was especially struck by the Rush fountain.
We were also reminded that the election is coming up in less than a week. There’s been a lot of discussion about elections both here and back in the US.
Eventually we met up with our small group of nine travelers and our amazing independent historian who would be giving us a tour, Allison. Some of the tour guides that we’ve met have been enthusiastic and friendly, but not really in-depth with their information. Allison is really a pro, having taught at the university level and done lots of private history work, as well as being part of British public television series on the most historic cities in the UK. We were in good hands for the next several hours.
We learned so many things about this ancient city where the history goes back 1000 years. Throughout our time walking together, we would learn more about back in the Roman time, the various Scottish and English rulers who were in charge, the wealthy and the poor who lived in this amazing old city.
Early on, we were brought through a beautiful farmers market. Both of us felt sad that there wasn’t enough time to stay, taste and buy some of all of the beautiful fresh fruits and vegetables.
We started walking from below and every time you turned around, you could see that castle up on the top of the old volcanic plug. The town was set up around that castle and the buildings were so old. Many many buildings that we went by were built in the 14, 15 and 1600’s.
There were so many interesting stories that Allison told, and she also gave us opportunity to ask questions and was very interactive. Dick was able to answer a couple of questions that are usually stumpers for the groups. But, he had done his homework, too.
We walked along that beautiful royal mile between the big castle and the palace at the end. We learned more about the unicorn being the symbol of Scotland, being wild and untamed. We had seen unicorns elsewhere, but Allison gave us the most information.
This is also a city where there were a lot of writers, and they really held up writers and poets. In one area there were many beautiful quotations carved in stone, right by the writers’ museum. We loved seeing these, even though some of them were written in Gaelic and so we couldn’t really understand what they said. We were reminded that John Muir we knew from California, was actually Scottish by birth.
After we heard the 1 o’clock cannon go off up at the castle, our tour was complete. We were so hungry and found our way to a beautiful healthy place with great fresh salads, soups, and breads for a delicious lunch. Then, we saw a great sculpture of the Scottish thistles the official plant of Scotland. We again have seen these elsewhere, but this was a particularly lovely statue.
Then we went over to the Scottish Storytelling Center where we had a chance to look around see some things focusing on Scottish Storytelling and Patti got to sit in the Storytelling chair with either a dragon or a sea serpent. We’re not sure which.
We also went to the Museum of Childhood dedicated to childhood experiences, including thousands of artifacts from the UK. We saw games and toys as well as recollections about how childhood has changed throughout the time. It was so interesting for us to see many things that were the same as our growing up in the Midwest of the US, and some things that were very different. This was a great museum.
We were then out of gas and headed back to our Airbnb. We picked up a few groceries and made us simple dinner in the kitchen there. We had had a beautiful time in Edinburgh and although we wished we had energy to go listen to some more traditional music, we were tired and needed to be caught up on our photos and blogging so we didn’t go out again. But our time was beautiful there. Even though this was a less busy day, we still had walked 6 miles. Our feet in our knees could feel it.
No comments:
Post a Comment