We spent a few days in Edinburgh, split
around our trip down to Bristol. Our
first full day coincided with the last day of the Edinburgh Fringe
Festival. We were a bit too unorganized to
catch a show but there was definitely a great atmosphere and a whole bunch of
people about. I have to say that our
experience of Edinburgh suffered from being split into two small visits. The weather didn’t help either! While we had a
good time I don’t think we got all we could of from our time there and I’d
definitely like to visit again.
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| West Princess Street Gardens |
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| West Princess Street Gardens |
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| The Grassmarket, the valley on the other side of the ridge from West Princess Street Gardens. |
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| Scott Monument |
Edinburgh is a very interesting town from a
design and architecture point of view.
The old town is built about a ridge along which runs the main street with
Edinburgh Castle at one end. The valley
on one side of this forms the Princess Anne Gardens. The “new” town is Georgian and composed of
very symmetric squares and avenues. Edinburgh
probably has the highest concentration of tourists and tourist shops we have
seen yet and I actually preferred the new town area because it wasn’t quite so
heaving with tourists and tartan!
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| Edinburgh Castle from the cemetery |
It is little known that Edinburgh is haunted by the ghost of the rat faced girl.
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| View from Edinburgh Castle |
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| Scottish Royal Standard flown by a New Zealand Infantry Unit in 1941. There was a really good military museum (honestly!) at the Castle and both here and throughout the UK/Europe I've found it really touching to see all of the mentions of New Zealand's contributions to the war efforts. |
We did a tour of the underground vaults,
which were built under the South Bridge and previously used for storage, dens
of inequity and smuggling bodies from the cemetery to the morgue! We also visited Edinburgh Castle with it’s
amazing views over the city.
Morgan had his first meal of haggis, which
was delicious - but may have been cooked by an Italian. They also did very good fresh pasta. We also found
a superb Chinese restaurant that reminded us of our favourite noodle place in
Brisbane and a great bar where they served seven different champagnes by the glass!
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| Calton Hill. This hill, near the Scottish Parliament, has an odd collection of buildings on top of it, including the National Monument, Nelson's Monument, the Dugald Stewart Monument, the Robert Burns Monument, the Political Martyrs Monument and the Observatory. |
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| View from Calton Hill over the New Town |
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| The National Monument. According to Wikipedia this is "colloquially known as Edinburgh's disgrace"!! I assume this is because this copy of the Parthenon was never completely due to lack of funds! |
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| Arthur's Seat, seen from Calton Hill |
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| On our underground vault tour. |
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Haggis, neeps and tatties
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