We made our way through the crowd, and headed into the castle, which is guarded by fierce-looking army dudes with kilts and very sharp-looking bayonets:
We passed through the big gate flanked by the images of Robert the Bruce and William Wallace (the latter, by the way, looking not a bit like Mel Gibson :-) We hung around for a few minutes to catch the guided tour, which turned out to be a good decision - our tour guide was great. They seem to hire their guides with an eye for colorful delivery - ours was completely over the top (think of a Scots version of dead-parrot-sketch John Cleese). He bellowed lots of fun historical facts about the goings-on at the castle (most of which seemed to involve various people losing various body parts or getting killed in other creative ways). Then we were turned loose to wander around ourselves, and brave the interminable line to check out the royal apartments and the Scottish crown jewels (to pass the time in line you get to view an almost Disney-esque multimedia exhibit on Scottish history).
One of Edinburgh Castle's turrets; the really big fireplace in the royal apartments.
The view from the ramparts of the castle is wonderful - all of Edinburgh spread out below you. Unfortunately none of our pictures came out very well, but you can get a little idea of the landscape from this one:
After exploring the castle, we set out in search of the botanical gardens, which were recommended to us by a number of people. Successfully negotiating the bus system again, we got to the gardens and started wandering around. It's very beautiful, and well worth a visit. Just as we were headed towards the big glasshouses, it started to rain (good timing, eh?). It was a lot easier to enjoy watching the downpour being dry and under cover... The outside grounds of the gardens are nice, but the really good stuff is in the glasshouses - lots of strange tropical plants, cacti, and aquatics, including the biggest damn lily pads I've ever seen. They were three or four feet across, and looked like something out of a cheap scifi movie:
Attack of the Giant Lilypads; taking in the wonders of the glasshouses
Thankfully, the rain started letting up just as we were getting kicked out of the glasshouses (it was closing time). We relieved ourselves of some cash at the gift shop (I bought a package of pea seeds for Gesine, who really likes to grow peas - more about those seeds later). By the way, I found it interesting that the money we got in England says "Bank of England", and the money we got in Scotland says "Bank of Scotland," and has pictures of Scottish folks like Burns on it. We were a bit afraid that with the new more-independent Scotland they wouldn't take English money, but they did, thankfully.
We wandered our way back home, checking out the architecture on the pricey-looking houses near the gardens. Edinburgh's buildings are mostly made of grey stone rather than the brick they seem to use everywhere in England - it's very pretty, but makes for a rather grey-looking city (particularly on cloudy days, which is how it was the whole time we were there). As we were wandering around we came across an Evening Standard sandwich board with the huge headline: HUNDREDS KILLED IN MASSIVE EARTHQUAKE. Maddeningly, it didn't say *where* the earthquake was - we didn't find out until the next morning that it had happened in the country we'd left only a few days before.
We braved the bus one more time to make our way back to Leith, and The Vaults (that's what the headquarters of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society is called). We decided to have dinner at the Society restaurant, The Vintners, which was absolutely fabulous - if you're ever in Edinburgh and you want something a bit more refined than neeps and tatties, check it out. (for those of you unfamiliar with the local food terms, neeps and tatties are mashed turnips and potatoes :-) Going into a postprandial stupor, we made our way up the stairs to our flat and off to bed not long thereafter.
Last updated 1/12/2000 by Jean Richter, richter@eecs.Berkeley.EDU