Apparently sleeping on buses is a lot like sleeping on planes. I’m rubbish at it in both the sky and on the ground. I dozed for a couple hours, so something’s better than nothing. A bit of tiredness can’t interfere with my plans though. First off, while all the museums were still closed, I headed up to Arthur’s Seat, a hill overlooking the old part of the city. Cooler weather than the last couple of days was amazing. Even so, since I was carrying my pack with all my luggage, I was breathing hard by the time I reached the top.
While descending, I came down the other side, where the path was sandy, not rocky. Bad idea. A steep, slippery path does not work well when your balance is constantly thrown off by a heavy pack. Let’s just say I learned that the bushes here are spiky and unpleasant. It was still a little early for everything to open up, so I headed to a coffee shop, where the planning session began. It was time well spent, mapping out activities for the next few days.
Luckily, by the time I was satisfied with my plan, the clock had struck 10:00 and I could go into tourist mode. First up: the Palace of Holyroodhouse. It is the royal family’s official residence in Edinburgh, and every July they spend at least a week here. Luckily, it wasn’t this week, otherwise I doubt that I would have been able to tour it. The palace was, as many are here, built from a 13th century monastery. Only some ruins remain of the initial buildings. The palace itself had also been beginning to fall into disrepair, but Queen Mary put effort into restoring it, bringing it back up to royal standards. The halls are full of ancient paintings and tapestries. An audio guide is included in the entrance fee, which is really convenient. It goes into great depth about the history of how different halls were used and how they are used today.
St. Giles’ Cathedral was next. Once again, an old and incredibly beautiful church. Notably, there I learned that many famous authors have connections to Edinburgh. One of them, Robert Louis Stevenson, has a stone relief carved into the wall with his portrait. In it, he is reclining with a pen and paper. But that wasn’t the original design- apparently the cigarette that he originally held was considered “improper” for the church setting.
Then came time for lunch. Aside from whiskey, the two foodstuffs most commonly associated with Scotland are black pudding and haggis. So I ordered them, saving the whiskey for another time. Luckily, some restaurants offer breakfast buns with two toppings and those two national dishes make the list. I say luckily, because the only other way I could think of would be to order a full Scottish breakfast, consisting of black pudding, haggis, bacon, sausages, buttered toast, and mushrooms.
When some people learn that the pudding gets its color from pig’s blood and the haggis is made with sheep offal, they can suddenly lose their taste for the traditional Scottish dishes. Given that I went into the meal knowing exactly what they were, it wasn’t an issue. I knew what I was ordering and was curious to try it. And the best part? I loved both of them. Particularly the black pudding. It was rich, but not overly so due to a good balance of oats in the mix. Furthermore, the iron taste that usually accompanies blood simply was non-existent. I wonder if that was a sign that this one was superbly prepared, or if there is something in the process of its preparation which negates the iron.
My reservation to go to Edinburgh Castle left me in a bit of an awkward situation timing wise. I had a bit over an hour between lunch and my entrance time slot, which wasn’t enough to go to another museum. So, as you probably guessed, I wandered. Edinburgh’s old town is great for this- logically laid out with plenty of alleyways connecting parallel streets. Maps just aren’t necessary.
At 16:00 when my entrance timeslot began, I was already at the door of the ticket booth. I’d pre-booked and only needed to print it. It’s highly recommended that you reserve a timeslot in advance, since they usually all fill up and walk-ins are frequently unavailable. The fortress itself isn’t too unique, but the cliffside position and its history are. It was repeatedly sieged, captured, and besieged once again, especially during the wars of independence. Interestingly, Bonnie Prince Charles, who led a rebellion against the English rule, might have had a more successful outcome had he finished his siege of the fort. Since the defenders had nothing better to do, they were firing cannons into the city, inflicting civilian casualties. Trying to prevent senseless loss of life, Charles backed down and directly attacked England. Had he continued against the fort, where huge sums of money were stored, he might have been better able to supply his armies, potentially changing the outcome of the war.
Aside from being a military installation, the fort also operated as a clock in a way. And it still carries on the tradition. Seafarers needed to know the time accurately for better longitude predictions. Many port cities abetted this by providing accurate times for navigators to calibrate their chronometers. In Greenwich, this was done with a falling sphere. Here they solved that issue by firing a cannon from the castle at exactly 13:00. There is a special artilleryman whose job is to take the shot.
Since the previous night was a bit sleepless, this marked the end of touring for the day. Afterwards, it was just a matter of picking up some dinner and making my way to the hostel. Oh, and doing laundry. My plans for laundry had gone awry along with my train plans. As a result, I was down to the barest minimums in terms of clean undergarments. As you can tell, that was a very exciting evening…
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