Parents Visit pt 3

Hello all!

Today we all awoke to another beautiful Scottish day, freezing rain drizzling down from the sky. The rain was supposed to move off for the afternoon, so we started our day off at Holyrood Palace. This is the palace that the Queen stays in when she comes to Edinburgh, with parts of it dating back to 1128.

The architecture is impressive. Large arches, carvings, and beautifully plastered ceilings adorn the palace. Sadly no photography is allowed inside, so you are going to have to take our word on this, or just come to Scotland and see for yourself! It takes a few hours to get through the interior with a free audio tour that lets you in on what you are looking at. Finally descending some sketchy spiral stairs we came out into the abbey.

The oldest part of the palace are the abbey ruins. Dating back to 1128, all that is left are the walls, the wooden roof caved in and was never repaired. More large arches and memorial stones cover the ruins, the amazing architecture is something rarely seen back home in the states. The skies were grey but the rain held off for us to throughly explore the ruins.

Oh yea, and the wall of corgi slippers in the gift shop was amazing. Lili was disappointed when she learned they only came in kids sizes, no warm corgi feet for her.

After the palace we made our way up the Royal Mile towards the castle. The Royal Mile is 5 roads that all connect and lead from Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood Palace. With the sun coming out to greet us we decided to take this opportunity to stop and get some lunch. We reached The World's End and decided that was it, no need to walk any further. The World's End is one of Edinburgh's most famous pubs, and in fact is featured in a Simon Pegg movie of the same name. It is the final pub on a looooooong pub crawl that most don't finish.

Good food filling us up, we kept hiking up the mile, which is actually 1 Scot mile, approximately 1.12 standard miles, up to Edinburgh Castle. Edinburgh Castle sits on, appropriately enough, castle rock, which is a dormant, extinct volcano. It is one of 7 hills that make up the city of Edinburgh, and has a commanding view form almost anywhere in the city.

Views for miles, stretching across the Firth of Forth into Fife, we only wished that the wind would calm down so we could enjoy them for longer. Winds sustained at 50 mph blowing through the city made sure we didn't spend too long admiring the views, and exploring all that the castle had to offer.

We explored everything from the war memorials to the Great Hall, the brig, and then the grande finale, a walk through the queens chambers to view the Scottish Crown Jewels. We experienced the same problem in parts as we did in the palace, limited photography allowance. If you want to see everything you will just have to come out yourself.

We followed up with a delicious dinner of hearty Italian that made us all glad we were out of the wind. Hopefully tomorrow has less wind with more sunshine.

More soon!

-L&A