Sunday, May 11, 2003

 

Day 18. Scotland. Monday 12 May 2003. Edinburgh Castle

Up this morning, feeling better and hungry for my breakfast although my stomach feels a little tender. Breakfast was a fine mixture of fruit salad and individual packets of cereal followed by a full Scottish breakfast, then heaps of toast.

With the banging pipes the Manageress insists we change rooms. We are moved to Ian and Anthony's room and they are moved to the top floor. Gillian goes too, to an adjacent room.

We all head off to Edinburgh centre, Ian driving; he 's been here before. Pat and I are to go to the Castle. Ian drives straight up to the Castle "front door", (gates), the gate official says "you can't park here" and Ian says he is just dropping off his gammy parents, sparing them the hill walk. The official says its ok.

We get our senior citizens tickets and elect for a commentary phone each too, which are well worth the extra cost. The numbered viewing points told us the history from pre history until modern times. We saw the little chapel high up used for hundred of years as a rubbish depositary and forgotten. Now it has been reclaimed and restored. Here Scottish Royalty worshipped in the far distant past.

The Great Hall with armour and weapons was impressive, we treaded the same boards as many Royal and famous people did before us. Then the Royal jewels, the famous stone of Scone. We saw many other things too numerous to mention.

Lunch was expensive here but plenty of hungry customers speaking many languages from all over the world were happy to pay the price, including us. Soup again... I'll look like soup and a roll was delicious but at 2.95 the Castle outdid the Motorway Services for price gouging a captive market.

In the souvenier shop I managed to find the last "Irving" fridge magnet with the crest and also as we departed I noticed some marked down books and I went back in and bought Celtic Mythology marked down from 14.95 to 6.00. Many of the popular souveneirs were by good quality manufacturers but outragiously expensive.

We stayed near the cafeteria waiting for the "one o clock" gun to be fired and a large crowd assembled. Pat got a good photo of the firing complete with the puff of smoke before it dispearsed in the wind. With her finger on the camera button, I thing the bang caused her to jump at the shock of the boom and press the button. Most of the crowd jumped I noticed at the instant of firing.

Where ever we went we could see where the castle walls externally and internally had been integrated with the base rock, the two welding together. The long ago building of the castle was a marvellous feat of engineering even by today's standards.

We spent 2.5 hours in the Castle and we were both tired. There is so much to see and we had only really scratched the surface but we did see the most important parts. We headed out of the Castle intending to see the Golden Mile but it started to rain on this blustery day so we managed to hail a rattley cab, the driver said about 6.00 to our B & B but charged us 4.50. We forgot to give him a tip!

Late in the afternoon the band of 3 returned and in the evening we drove out to a hotel Pennicuik on the outskirts of Edinburgh for a meal. Ian had stayed once at this hotel on business up here and told us the dinner helpings were enormous and they were. Pat and I had Beef and Ale pie and it was deliscious. We could not manage pudding.

On our return Ian and Anthony went to the pub for a few ales, Gillian, Pat and I went to bed.

I was still feeling a bit under the weather but never the less enjoyed our day.

Tomorrow we head back to Cricklade.

posted by OldEric 3:11 pm