Skip to main content

Edinburgh: Out and about

After the bustle of London, Edinburgh was a wee more relaxing.  It still has the crowds of tourists and tons of stores selling goods for tourists, particularly around the Golden Mile and near the Castle, however outside these places things just felt a bit more sedate.


A good place to start a walk is on Calton hill, just outside the centre of the city where you could get nice views of the city as well as the Firth of Forth and Arthurs Seat.

Walking towards the city past the railway station the eye is drawn to the Scott Monument - the memorial erected to honour a famous Scottish writer.  Eric's first thought was it looks just like a medieval version of Thunderbird three for those fans of the old SciFi TV show.

Heading up into the old town, St Giles Cathedral, together with the Castle (tomorrows adventure), dominates the upper part of the town.


Walking down the Golden Mile it's hard not to come away with a scarf or other souvenir from the myriad of tourist shops.  Thankfully we don't like whiskey else we could have stayed their all day seduced by the Scot's favourite spirit.  There were certainly enough restaurants and specialist whiskey sellers to keep a whiskey fan busy for weeks.

Down the far end of the Royal Mile you can find the Palace of Holyrood, the home of Scottish royalty and residence for English Monarchs when they visit Scotland.

Finally to make sure you sleep soundly a climb up to Arthurs seat on a sunny yet windy afternoon is a great way to finish the day.  The 360 degree views are amazing, once you get your breath back you can see for miles in all directions.  For Eric it was his second trip up to the seat that day having run up early in the morning.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Inca Trail day 4

This was the day we would arrive at Macchu Picchu so we awoke with a keen sense of anticipation.   To celebrate the last day on the trail, somehow the chef had whipped up an enormous cake which was served after breakfast.  After a discussion with Marco about the likely weather over the next two days we agreed that it would be best to tour Macchu Picchu as soon as we arrived in mid afternoon rather than wait until tomorrow. Marco assured us that this would mean less crowds and better weather (he was right). We could see the backside of the mountain above Macchu Picchu in front of us as we started out.  Unlike the last two days, today was mainly downhill.  We would have to descend about 1,000 meters and judging by the first part of the morning walk, most of this would be on steep and slippery rocky steps. After alternating descents and traversing along steep hillsides through cloud forest and bamboo groves we reached the ruins of Intipata. Intipata was a very...

Vatnajökull National Park

Vatnajökull National Park is a must visit destination for any tourist to Iceland.  It's also one of the most inaccessable.  The main reason for this inaccessability is that much of the National Park is taken up by the enormous Vatnajökull glacier.  So you can't just drive in and walk around.  To see the interior of the park (the glacier) you need to make special arrangements - like taking a tour in a Superjeep. We booked a Superjeep tour for our first day at the park which was cancelled due to the inclement weather... However the next day we were definitely ready to see as much as we could and fortunately the tour was back on. Our tour guide was Hungarian but very well informed and we learned a lot about Icelandic culture as well as glaciers and volcanoes. The Jeep we were in had been made by the driver (and some friends) and consisted of part of a Chrysler with another van's back end bolted on and modified engine and gears.  It had 54 inch wheels w...

Iceland's wild east coast

The east coast of Iceland attracts a fraction of the tourists and has a fraction of the population of the western side.  It really is the place for a remote getaway.  The hosts of our farmstay near Egilsstadir moved from Reykjavik to get away from the system and the hectic Reykjavik scene 😊.  Their farm certainly epitomised the word remote.  Samuel loved the farm, especially playing with the two very friendly and intelligent farm dogs. As with much of Iceland, one of the best ways to spend the time is just driving with plenty of stops for photography - in fact it's hard to make much progress in some scenic areas as the urge to park the car and whip out the camera every few kilometers is overwhelming.  This was especially the case on the one long day we spent driving from Egilsstadir to Hofn.  We started our journey on yet another overcast morning and almost immediately headed down a rough back road off the ring road in search of a waterfall.  We...