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Tuesday 17 May, walking through Edinburgh, the Royal Mile

Scotland 2005 - part XIV

Elisabeth & Teije
2006-08-27 10:33:38

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Today we start at the top of Castle Rock where the castle stands and walk down the Royal Mile aflopen, the streets that connect the castle to Holyrood Palace, through the old town. We first visit the Outlook Tower where a camera obscura was placed on top in the 19th century. From the top we have a very nice view over the city.

And over the castle and the square before it where preparations for the military tattoo in August have already begun. The costs of building the stands for the spectators are supposed to be a fortune every year, but it attracts also lots of tourists.

In the dome on top of the building a camera obscura shows us the whole city center and is for more than 150 years one of the top attractions of the city. On the five floors a lot of holographic art is displayed and fantastic paintings and drawings of Escher and other artists and every object is concerned with deceiving the eye and how we see things differently from reality.

There are many monumental buildings along the Royal Mile worth visiting, like the High Kirk of St. Giles where John Knox started the Scottish Reformation. Under his influence Protestantism became the official national religion of Scotland from 1560. The leaded windows in this church are very clear and detailed and very famous.

Through the alleys we see now and then the 200 meters high Scott monument, a memorial for this well-known Scottish writer. Teije still wants to climb it one day, but today we have other things to see and do. Another attractive place is the Tron Kirk where we can see the results of excavations and the fundaments of houses and the street plan from the 17th and 18th century.

Further down the street is John Knox house which can also be visited, the building in scaffolds, but it is not sure whether he really lived in this house. The building right of it is the oldest preserved house of Edinburgh from the 16th century, called Moubray House. But this one is not open to the public. A few hundred meters further stands Huntly House (free entrance) and there we get a good idea how an original 17th century house looked like. Of course this was the dwelling of someone who was quite rich for that time.
It takes us quite a few hours before we come to the new Scottish parliament and a bit further Holyrood Palace at the end of the Royal Mile. The palace, where the queen stays when visiting Edinburgh, is closed now. But there are enough nice places and houses along this one and a half kilometers long road through the heart of the old town. In a paper we read that the new Parliament (which costed tens of millions pounds) still has a lot of flaws, but even this very modern building fits in perfectly with the surrounding old town.

Just south of the Royal Mile we visit 'Our dynamic Earth', a very interesting museum with audiovisual shows about the evolution of the earth and the possible effects on earth from the greenhouse warming up and overpopulation. It is an ideal experience for children, since you may touch everything and play with things. We see the succes of it on the faces of the many groups of schoolkids that were walking around, they all seem to have a lot of fun and so do we!
On the way back to the hotel we make a last stop at the National Museum and the Royal Museum of Scotland, a huge building where we could spend at least a couple of days to see all of it! We only visit a few rooms which we find interesting and decide we surely have to come back here one day. But now we are full of impressions of everything thet we have seen today, so after an hour we call it a day and return to the hotel.

When we sit down in our room, we notice how tired we are from walking all day and seeing so many things. Time to read a bit, have a good sleep so we will be rested enough to go for it again, tomorrow. But tomorrow we will mainly take busses, so we should be allright.