Edinburgh and Environs

We took the bus into Edinburgh and went straight away to Edinburgh Castle. We had read that queues for tickets could get long. In our wildest imaginations we couldn’t have dreamed how long they became later in the day, as we were leaving. We had purchased Historic Scotland Explorer passes that let us proceed immediately to the ticket check point. The castle is like a small city. I won’t attempt to describe the history of the Castle – it is far too long and convoluted to cover in blog format [note to self: American students have it way too easy when they take American history. Hey, they’ve only a few hundred years to study. Scottish and English students have Millennia to worry about. Furthermore their rulers have a penchant for changing their names, changing the numbers after their names, changing spouses, and so on. It would have been so much easier if they’d made a law that if you are a King of England your name is Harold, and if you are Queen of England your name is Margaret. Then if you read “Margaret XXI said . . .” you’d know immediately that it was a queen they were quoting.]

Some of Edinburgh’s charm was suspended by major transportation construction that has ripped up major portions of streets near the Castle and the Royal Mile. But if you look up a bit as you walk by these old buildings it is possible to get some sense of what walking a medieval city must have been like.

We saw a small, special Swiss drum corps perform some drumming routines. They will be performing in the Edinburgh Military Tattoo that starts this weekend. The Castle has been used for many purposes over the years, including housing prisoners of war. During the American Revolution captured Americans were held there. In one picture you can see where an American prisoner carved the Stars and Stripes into the door of his room.

Edinburgh has many wonderful statues to many famous people. I loved the image of a gull doing to the statue of Adam Smith what Wall Street greed did to capitalism the past few years.

For dinner we returned to the Espy in Portobello. During the meal I commented to Jane that Roy Zartarian would be disappointed in me, for we would be leaving Scotland the next day and I hadn’t had so much as a dram of Scottish whiskey. Vanessa, the hostess of sticky toffee pudding fame [see previous post] asked if I would like a whiskey after dinner. I was going to demure but, thinking of Roy, asked her to bring me one of her choosing. She brought a small glass of Lagavulin. I must say it was a rather satisfying way to end the meal.

Tomorrow it’s on to Lindisfarne and York!