We Capture the Castle: Again

There is an energy that comes from that atomic fireball we know as the sun. The moment we woke up and saw it a sunny morning in Glasgow, we knew another major trip was on the day’s agenda.

Major is, of course, relative; Edinburgh is only a little over an hour and a half away via train, but since the sun was out, we were much more persuaded that we should spend the entire day out and about.

Without dawdling over breakfast, we bundled ourselves and our gear into the station and took a scenic tour of gorgeous Central Station… which has no direct trains to Glasgow. Oops. Once we got to the correct station, Queen Street, we enjoyed a quick express dash to the city, which was still sunny and packed with the massive amount of colorful tourists, itinerant Hare Krishna monks, pipers, shoppers, political pollsters and others who we always seems to find there.

Edinburgh Castle was very, very different in feel from Stirling Castle. Many of the natives have told us that Stirling is better, and now we can see what they mean. Edinburgh Castle is still being used as a military installation. If you’re a fan of weaponry and military history, you’ll really enjoy some of the displays — there’s armor and hauberks and axes and old pistols galore. There’s a huge memorial chapel. There are actual soldiers in camouflage gear. Edinburgh’s identity as a castle is second to its identity as a military billet.

Probably because Edinburgh is more of a tourist haven than Stirling, there are legion tshatshke shops, seemingly every few feet and quite a few more things in the castle behind velvet ropes. We saw the Honors – the Stone of Scone and the crown jewels of Scotland – but weren’t allowed to photograph them for security reasons. Additionally the memorial chapel was off-limits to photography as well, for reasons of respect for the dead. Still, the interactive displays, including mannequins in period costume, the architecture, and the panoply of the city from atop the hill make Edinburgh Castle well worth the climb.

When we wore ourselves out on cobblestoned streets and stone edifices, we walked down into the town to discover what else Edinburgh had to offer. Several touring companies offer a hop on/hop off bus service, which allowed us to see the entire city and hear several amusing guides discuss the million dollar windows on the Parliament building, the famous who have frequented the city, and the pubs where the sons of royalty come to have a drink when they’re in town. Of course, fame has nothing on us, as Van managed to be interviewed by none other than BBC Scotland about his perception of the way Scots …dress!!

Since he was swaddled into a huge coat on what appeared to be a sunny day, he made some wry remark and smiled big for the camera. If any of you happened to have seen the news last night, Van was the guy with brown hair, sunglasses and a large black coat…We arrived at the flat too late to catch the nightly news, and anyway — being well accustomed to the paparazzi and the cameramen, we forgot all about it…

(Isn’t that embarrassing? You’d think Van might have remembered. But no…)

We finished our time in Edinburgh with a trip to The Museum of Childhood, which is a tall, narrow building with five galleries full of the assorted flotsam and jetsam of childhood — from games and toys to children’s ration books from the 40’s, to the first British spellers and grammar books. The recordings of voices of children singing counting games and jump rope chants was cheery background noise for our own memories of messing around when we were kids, and the “nursery” upstairs with the dress-up toys made us laugh. Pretty much every American kid who’s read Peter Pan or any British children’s book has been jealous of the fact that they didn’t have a nursery, too!

We weren’t jealous for too long, however. We stopped at a pub for dinner, and D. treated us to tablet — evil, evil Scottish fudge — and when we finally got home, we were cold and tired, and the flat was nice and warm.

Really, all that with friends along, too? It doesn’t get any better.

– D & T

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.