Edinburgh, or Where We Learn To Check Topomaps Before Embarking on Hikes

So, I realize that this entry is quite a bit after the first.  I do have some to go in between, I just haven't gotten around to writing them yet.  As such, this blog is going to become incredibly disorganized in the next week or two, as I try to update it with all of the entries that I should have written so far, but such is life.

On Saturday (Feb. 19th), Christina, Laura, Annie and I embarked to Edinburgh.  We left just about as early in the morning as possible, catching the 6:30 am bus from Aberdeen.  This put us into the Edinburgh around 10.  We disembarked and walked 15 minutes to the hostel.

Once we got there, two things were immediately apparent.  First, Edinburgh has a much greater range of elevation than Aberdeen.  We had to walk up a rather long staircase to get from the street by the bus station to the Royal Mile where Castle Rock Hostel is located.  The second is that Castle Rock Hostel do not lie at all on their website when they say that it is "located right under the Castle ramparts."  The hostel is about 50 yards from  Edinburgh castle.  Here's the view from the front of the hostel.

After dropping our bags off, we started the day's adventures.  First on the list:  Edinburgh Castle.  This is a very interesting castle, and definitely worth a visit.  It isn't a ruin like the others that we have and will be visiting.  Rather, it's a fortress that was in use for hundreds of years and was consistently restored after any siege.  There are a couple of museums in the grounds, and just a lot of different stuff to see.  This off course means that it is quite the tourist spot, and though we arrived at 10 am on a Saturday, already the castle was teeming with other sight-seers.

The tourists were everywhere.  Note the Oliners standing by the cannons.

Here's a better shot of Annie, Laura, and Christina (left to right).

Like any good tourist attraction, Edinburgh Castle has some quirky spots.  Here is the official dog cemetery.

This is the Scottish National War Memorial.  The building is beautiful, and inside there a a bunch of books listing all of the Scottish casualties from the First World War.

One of the more unique bits of this visit was the wedding.  As we walked out of one of the museums in the castle, we heard the unmistakable sound of a bagpiper.  Having not yet grown tired of the sounds of bagpipes as we would Sunday after shopping the Royal Mile, we hurried over to gawk.  The piper, however, appeared to be playing into a wall, rather than to the crowd of tourists gathered around.  Confused, we watched for about 5 minutes, when the piper abruptly stopped playing and walked to a different part of the grounds as a rather fancy car pulled up with a sign that said "Wedding Hire" on the back.  Apparently, the piper had been tuning and warming up for the soon to commence wedding.  The oddest bit about the wedding was that the wedding party showed up in old-fashioned cars and got out amidst the tourists.  No effort was made to clear a special way for them or shoo the rest of us off.  Not wanting to waste any time, we quickly headed off to another part of the castle, but I got a discreet picture of the cars.

Though the guide book suggested leaving two hours to visit the castle, we succeed in spending four and a half.  Suffice to say everything that could have been seen here was seen, with one noteworthy exception.

That is the 1 o'clock gun.  It is fired everyday at 1 o'clock to serve as a time signal to the ships in the port.  Somehow, we managed to miss this while getting a cup of tea in the cafe directly beside the gun.  For the life of me, I can't figure out how we didn't hear it.  I would almost say that the gun wasn't fired, but the cover which had been on it earlier was missing, and there was a faint smell of powder in the air when we walked by again.

After a rather thorough visit to the castle, we split up.  Annie, Laura and I decided to be incredibly touristy and go on the tour of the Scottish Whisky Experience, while Christina headed over to the National Museum of Scotland.  The Whisky Experience is fun, as long as you go in knowing that it is super touristy.  First, we were seated in a car on a track painted like a whisky barrel and rode around listening to the process of making whisky.  It was exactly like the Hershey's Chocolate World ride, except without the singing animatronic cows and the free piece of chocolate at the end.  After hearing all about the making of a single malt Scotch Whisky, we went to a room with a bunch of other tourists.  Sitting in front of us were four jars and a small glass.  The tour guide then explained to us how the four jars represented the different aromas indicative of the Scotch Whisky from the four main whisky regions of Scotland.  We were then allowed to choose one of four single malt whiskies to taste.  After getting a dram, we were ushered into another room which contained the world's largest single collection of Scotch whisky.  They had over 3000 bottles of whisky covering the walls.  Here our tour guide explained the proper way to drink scotch:  however you want, as long as you're drinking it.  She also explained how to "nose" it and look at "body" and "color". 

Here's one of the racks of whisky bottles.

This was probably my favorite whisky bottle.

After the Whisky Experience, we raced down the Royal Mile to meet up with Christina at the National Museum.  We arrived 20 minutes before closing with one goal:  see Dolly.  We had four of five docents pawn us off on each other, until the final one actually had to lead us back to Dolly.  Dolly, the world's most famous sheep, is stuffed and displayed on a rotating podium.

Here I am with Dolly.

After the museum, we stopped back at the hostel to check in and get a recommendation for dinner.  I would highly recommend this hostel.  Everything was nice and clean, and they have free wireless internet, if you're carrying around a laptop (we were not).  The girls were in a room with only 6 beds.  I, however, was in a guys room with 14 beds.  My room was called "Underwear," and my bed was "Thong."

The door to my room.

After our long day of sightseeing, we went out, grabbed some dinner, and then went to bed early.

The next day, we decided to get in as much hiking as possible.  First, we hiked down the whole Royal Mile to the Scottish Parliament building and Holyrood Palace.

Here's the startlingly new Parliament building.  The architecture is pretty cool, though it doesn't really fit in with the rest of the city.

From here, we climbed up to Arthur's Seat.  The peak is 250.5 m above sea level.  It's not necessarily the highest climb possible, but with a high temperature of 3 deg Celsius, it was certainly enough of a hike.  It was definitely worth it, though.  From the top, you can see all of Edinburgh.

Here's the view from the top.  In the center-left of the image, you can make out Edinburgh Castle, where we started the day.

And here are four Oliners enjoying the peak.

After we tired of the view, we then started the trek out to Craigmillar Castle.  Craigmillar is another 1.5 miles out of the city center.  After a bit of hiking and even more walking in town, we finally arrived at the castle.  Craigmillar is what I would describe as the stereotypical castle.  When I think of castle ruins, this is what I think of.  There is a central keep six stories high, or so, and two rectangular walls surrounding it.  The ruins were mostly intact - the castle fell into disuse and became ruins because it was out of style in the early 18th century.

Here's the castle from across the grounds.

This view is of the inner wall.

After thoroughly exploring the castle, we began the long trek back.  It turns out that we were 2.5 miles away from the beginning of the Royal Mile, and probably 3 miles or so away from the hostel.  After another hour of walking, we finally arrived back at the Royal Mile.  Here, we got some lunch and did some shopping in the tourist stores.  All of the stores were similar.  They had cheap kilts, wool scarves and bagpipe music playing on the stereo.  Finally, we went back to the hostel, grabbed our baggage and caught a bus back to Aberdeen.

On the way back, we passed the Forth Bridge over the Firth of Forth (try saying that ten times fast).  Though I didn't really do it justice, I tried to get a picture of this oft-photographed railway bridge.