First day in Edinburgh

4th June 2013

Do you know, I don’t think I’ve ever been inside a terrace house until Glasgow, I’ve admired them for years and have always wondered what they’d be like inside. Well, I stayed in one in Edinburgh too, in a studio apartment on the ground floor, and it was just gorgeous – except for being able to hear the people in the lower floor apartment getting it on one night! I don’t know about everyone else, but I feel like I’m doing something wrong when I can hear other people’s intimate moments, like a voyeur or something – oh well a pillow over the head does wonders.

My first sight of Edinburgh Castle

It was just a ten minute walk (if you didn’t get lost) to the centre of town. My first morning walking, I visited the red light district, saw lots of interesting signs for lap dances and similar fun, but was too concerned with getting back on track to take any photos. It’s always the way isn’t it? You think of these things after the fact, or at least I do.

Anyhow, I wasn’t too far off course and next thing you know I was at the base of the walls of Edinburgh Castle! Mind you, it took another ten minutes to walk around to the front to get inside. It was the longest queue I’ve come across so far and the hottest too, the weather is just perfect.

Heading to Edinburgh Castle through the stadium for the Tattoo

Edinburgh Castle is not at all as I expected. I always thought it was just a castle, but it seems more like a little settlement perched up on a mountain in the middle of the city. There’s an enormous paved area outside the walls where the Edinburgh Tattoo is held in August and they seemed to have half the grandstands erected already. That was my first surprise, that the tattoo is held outside the castle walls.

Waiting for the cannon to fire at Edinburgh Castle

You could easily spend all day wandering through the different parts of the castle and all the other buildings. I had a lovely lunch at one of the eateries, overlooking the city; it felt like it was a million miles away but really only a few minutes walk. I’d read somewhere that they fire a cannon each day at 1pm so when I came across a huge crowd of people, with cameras and phones held in the air, all pointing in the same direction, I used my amazing powers of deduction and figured they were waiting for the cannon to fire. So, instead of doing the same thing, and because I couldn’t see the cannon either, I started filming them, they were so intent on capturing the exact moment. I almost dropped my camera and wet my pants all at the same time when it went off, it was an absolute monstrous bang! I was in good company though, just about everyone had the same reaction.

Second and biggest surprise was that NOTHING in Edinburgh is free! Everywhere I went I was paying entrance fees, which is normal really and I usually don’t even comment, but having just spent a week in Glasgow where there are free museums and attractions all over the place, it came as a bit of a rude shock.

National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh

I had wandered down Edinburgh’s Royal Mile from the castle, and as you can only window shop, without buying anything for so long, I headed to the National Museum of Scotland. What an unbelievable place, it’s huge and full of Celtic, Viking and Roman history as it relates to Scotland, as well as science and technology, art, you name it, there’s a gallery for it here. I just love wandering the streets. looking at buildings and people, but honestly I could have spent days instead this building instead of just hours.