Edinburgh
November 4-6: It was beautiful, sunny and bloody chilly and once again I suspect that Great Britain and bad weather is all lies and slander.
The panorama is awesome. The town would need a 3D map with all its hills, slopes, valleys, bridges, crescents and in the evening I would need somebody to carry me around but it was worth it. I kept discovering new passages, yards, stairs... The houses are just insanely high - not only built on huge fortifications but in a way they became fortifications.
The sky was so clear I could see Arthur´s seat and the hills around as well as Forth of Firth and its other side which is not - as the guide on the Edinburgh Castle assured us - Ireland, France, America nor Norway (and people did ask this).
On the first evening I tried a ghost tour. The guide was great. He showed us around various creepy places and places that did not seem creepy but supposedly they were. He demonstrated hanging, stabbing and torture techniques on us and eventually led us into the catacombs under the historical centre that include ruins of a bridge, a mortuary, gentlemen´s club of a questionable reputation, a maternity room (well, a cell basically), a wine store and “flats” where the whole families used to live all packed in one small room, without privacy and daylight (which scared me more than the scary stories)... multifunctional gets a new meaning.
Guy Fawkes Night! I was just roaming around in the evening and got to the Calton Hill park which I wouldn´t visit if it wasn´t full of people going to see the fireworks. It was terribly cold but I loved it. There was a nice firework just next to the hill. Only bats were not quite happy about it.
The Castle: I must have exceeded the average crazy visitor time (French, Dutch, Spanish and American prisoners of war do not count).
I had a look at the Crown Jewels of Scotland that have dramatic histories of being hidden, rescued, found... and at the Stone of Scone which Scots got back from the English after some 700 years. The deal is that the Stone will be lent for the future coronations to London with a sticker note on it: “Bring back in five days. Not in five centuries.” Underlined twice.
I climbed the Arthur´s Seat! A hill of 250.5 which is an achievement one can truly appreciate after a few months in the Netherlands, the flattiest of the flat (By the way, watch out: The Dutch plan to build their own mountain! 2000 m). My moment of victory was ruined a bit by the fact that locals take their small children to climb the hill on Sunday morning as a brief exercise before lunch.
I admit that the ghost stories got to me, however, the scariest by far were the young people who run around half-naked in the November cold. Don't you love your kidneys, guys?
I saw some men in kilts. One of them gave me some shortbread!
I think I will come back for more exploring.
Here is the whole album.
As a bonus, a treatise on national symbols.
The panorama is awesome. The town would need a 3D map with all its hills, slopes, valleys, bridges, crescents and in the evening I would need somebody to carry me around but it was worth it. I kept discovering new passages, yards, stairs... The houses are just insanely high - not only built on huge fortifications but in a way they became fortifications.
The sky was so clear I could see Arthur´s seat and the hills around as well as Forth of Firth and its other side which is not - as the guide on the Edinburgh Castle assured us - Ireland, France, America nor Norway (and people did ask this).
On the first evening I tried a ghost tour. The guide was great. He showed us around various creepy places and places that did not seem creepy but supposedly they were. He demonstrated hanging, stabbing and torture techniques on us and eventually led us into the catacombs under the historical centre that include ruins of a bridge, a mortuary, gentlemen´s club of a questionable reputation, a maternity room (well, a cell basically), a wine store and “flats” where the whole families used to live all packed in one small room, without privacy and daylight (which scared me more than the scary stories)... multifunctional gets a new meaning.
Guy Fawkes Night! I was just roaming around in the evening and got to the Calton Hill park which I wouldn´t visit if it wasn´t full of people going to see the fireworks. It was terribly cold but I loved it. There was a nice firework just next to the hill. Only bats were not quite happy about it.
The Castle: I must have exceeded the average crazy visitor time (French, Dutch, Spanish and American prisoners of war do not count).
I had a look at the Crown Jewels of Scotland that have dramatic histories of being hidden, rescued, found... and at the Stone of Scone which Scots got back from the English after some 700 years. The deal is that the Stone will be lent for the future coronations to London with a sticker note on it: “Bring back in five days. Not in five centuries.” Underlined twice.
I climbed the Arthur´s Seat! A hill of 250.5 which is an achievement one can truly appreciate after a few months in the Netherlands, the flattiest of the flat (By the way, watch out: The Dutch plan to build their own mountain! 2000 m). My moment of victory was ruined a bit by the fact that locals take their small children to climb the hill on Sunday morning as a brief exercise before lunch.
I admit that the ghost stories got to me, however, the scariest by far were the young people who run around half-naked in the November cold. Don't you love your kidneys, guys?
I saw some men in kilts. One of them gave me some shortbread!
I think I will come back for more exploring.
Here is the whole album.
As a bonus, a treatise on national symbols.