We started our summer vacation a couple days before school let out by going on a big family trip to Scotland. We took a bus, a tram, a plane, followed by two different shuttle buses, another plane, another tram, and then just one more plane got us to Edinburgh! Yay! Now we were just one tram ride away from our cozy little rooms in Edinburgh's New Town.
When we arrived on a Thursday afternoon, very jet-lagged, rather stinky, and hungry as can be. I made dinner reservations for us at an all-you-can-eat buffet, which the kids absolutely loved. Everyone felt a lot better for having eaten a good dinner, so we went for a little walk up Calton Hill.
The views were beautiful, the weather was nice, and the kids got energy from somewhere because they were running and climbing and playing at the top.
Calton Hill offers 360 degree views of Edinburgh, but the most beautiful portions are looking down on the Old Town and looking over at the nearby larger hill Arthur's Seat.
That little bit of exertion was just about all we could handle after all that travelling, so we headed back for an early-ish bedtime. The next morning I did have to get the kids up at at 'em, but we did get a bit of a sleep in before we got going on our very full day exploring Old Town.
We passed through Prince's Street Garden on a little walk on our way to our first stop of the day: the Writer's Museum.
The Writer's Museum is in a very old manor house in the heart of Old Town and is dedicated to three of Scotland's most beloved writers: Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Sir Walter Scott.
it's a small museum, but we did get to learn a little literary history (and use their toilets) before we headed up the hill to the castle rock.
Edinburgh Castle is quite the formidable fortress what with all the walls and gates and battlements and portcullises. I wouldn't want to try and bust in by force. It looks impregnable, but it's actually been captured and changed hands many times.
In fact, Robert the Bruce once captured Edinburgh castle by sending 30 men to scale the sheer cliff of the rock at night. They were able to sneak into the fortress and capture it before a real defense could be mounted.
The national motto if Scotland is written right above the gate of the castle, which translates to "no one provokes me with impunity" or in modern parlance, FAFO.
We walked the battlements, visited the regimental museum, saw the crowned jewels of Scotland, and saw/heard/felt the one o'clock gun. Historically, people would set their watches by the timing of the one o'clock gun. Why one o'clock? It's very efficient (and cheaper) to only have to use one blast of the gun rather than 12 for noon.
There was a lot to see in the regimental museum. I was particularly impressed with this collection of sporrans. A Sporran is the traditional man purse of the kilt wearing highlander, the badger pelt one in the middle is clearly the best.
The kids didn't really have the patience to learn about everything the museum had to offer, but the collection was quite interesting.
Out up on top of the upper battlements we met Mons Meg, the gigantic cannon gifted to James II in 1457. It had a range of 2 miles. I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of one of those shots.
The oldest existing building in Edinburgh is in the castle complex. St. Margaret's Chapel (that little square building in the photo below) dates back to 1130, named for the mother of the King David I.
The chapel has three small picture windows: St. Columba, William Wallace, and St. Margaret.
According to Paul, Edinburgh is the best castle we visited on our trip. It is huge, practically a city unto itself, with lots of nooks and crannies and little dingy stone rooms.
It was late afternoon by the time we left the castle. We said good-bye to the guardians statues of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce at the castle gates, and headed down into the old town.
The one mile down hill from Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood Palace is colloquially known as "the royal mile". It is mostly stuffed full with souvenir shops and over-priced eateries, but there are a few interesting spots to visit along the way. The Tolbooth Kirk isn't really a kirk (church) anymore, it's the headquarters of the Edinburgh Festival.
Scotland's great Enlightenment philosophers are honored along the way. Here's a statue of David Hume:
The most important kirk in Edinburgh is St. Giles. The church was founded in 1124 by King David I, but the oldest portions of the current building date back to the 14th century. A gothic cathedral is a time consuming project, often taking a hundred years or more to complete, not counting restoration or renovations that come later. This church has undergone a lot of changes over the centuries.
This particular kirk (church) is famously the parish where John Knox taught, bringing the reformation to Scotland. So the originally catholic built cathedral became the most important Presbyterian Kirk in Scotland
There is a statue of John Knox in the kirk, but he's not buried inside. In fact, he doesn't have a real head stone of any kind. He preached austerity, and he practiced what he preached. He is buried in an unmarked grave somewhere under the car park of St. Giles, there is a small plaque in spot #23.
This sweet lady who volunteers at the kirk saw our kids and asked, "would they like to ring the bell?" Yes. Yes they would. She brought us over to this little bell and let each kid give one good 'bong'. I'm not sure for what purpose, maybe it's an hourly thing? Whatever the reason, it was certainly a unique experience.
We stopped our walk just shy of the palace of Holyrood. The kids were pretty wiped out, Arthur was basically asleep on Lee's shoulders, so we saw the strikingly modern parliament building, and then we made our way back to our rental for a rest and dinner.
The rest helped, but we couldn't sit around for too long because we did have one activity scheduled for the evening. We did a guided tour of Mary King's Close. Arthur was too little to do the tour, so we split into pairs and took turns doing the tour. Lee and Paul went first, then George, Arthur, and I met them at the bus stop to make the toddler hand off before the second tour slot.
There are no photos allowed inside the close (blame Guy Fawkes, not even joking). A close is an alley with a gate or door at either end, this alley got built over the top of, so it is completely enclosed and acts as the basement and foundation of a city building. We learned a lot about what life was like in medieval Edinburgh, about the real residents of this close, and plague. So much plague. George now wants to be a plague doctor for Halloween.
Because Georgie was so into the creepy plague stuff, I was persuaded to buy the souvenir photo. Our first full day in Edinburgh was pretty exhausting, our second day was no less so.
I let the crew sleep in as long as I could before getting everyone up and heading to the National Museum of Scotland.
It's really two museums in conjoined buildings put together. On one side an older, elegant building full of science, culture, and natural history exhibits. On the other side a modern fortress full of artifacts of Scottish history.
The kids very much preferred the science portion of the museum, where they got to see Dolly the cloned sheep (she's taxidermy now) and play with all the interactive exhibits.
But what really set this museum and this day apart is that our visit coincided with the first day of the Edinburgh Children's Festival. The festival kicks off two weeks of filling the city with theatre and art for children by hosting some performers and crafts for free at the National Museum of Scotland. There was a variety of kinds of performances--dance, puppetry, plays, music--just popping up throughout the museum all day.
We sat and watched acrobats performing a routine on a giant swing set, which absolutely mesmerized every kid in the room. The act Arthur loved the most was the giant cat puppet, which wandered around with his owner feeding him oversized fish.
It was a very busy day at the museum, but it was busy with kids and kid friendly things. That made the business feel energizing rather than stressful. The most stressful thing about the museum was the maze of where to find toilets. There are a lot of restrooms in the building, but for some reason they were so hard to find for me, even with a map in my hands and signs marking their location.
Eventually I did make my kids visit the history side of the museum. But wouldn't ya know it? There was a kids art project going on over there. So Lee and I kind of took turns looking around at the early history exhibits while the kids drew and colored.
I'm really interested in the Picts and the history of Scotland during the wars with Roman invaders, and there were quite a few artifacts from that period.
Upstairs in the vein of more recent history there was a lot of big industrial age machinery that was pretty cool to see up close, but the kids weren't thrilled by all the history, they wanted to get back to the "fun" side of the museum.
Paul and Arthur weren't interested in going up onto the rooftop terrace for all the amazing views over old town, so we divided up again. First I went up alone, then Lee and George took a turn.
At that point, kids were tired, kids were hungry, it was time to make our way out of the museum and get some food. We passed by Greyfriars Bobby and the cute little doggie statue. Apparently, the statue is of a dog who belonged to a policeman who walked the beat around these parts. When the policeman died, his little furry friend stood guard over his graveside. Whether or not that is true, it makes for a cute statue.
We took a shortcut through Greyfriars Kirkyard, where the kids immediately wanted to play Ghost in the Graveyard. We didn't want to push the lunch time too much later, but we spent a few minutes in the relative peace of the cemetary.
There are significantly more people buried here than there are headstones. Headstones were expensive, but everyone wanted to be buried in a kirkyard or hallowed ground. The result is people being buried in unmarked graves in layers.
From Greyfriars it is a very short walk to Grassmarket, which is a little market street lined with pubs and restaurants. But as it was Saturday, there was also a pop up farmers/craft market. We picked out food from the market stalls, everyone eating something different, and sat down under a tree to have lunch and hope we wouldn't get rained on.
We had to bribe the kids with a promise of future ice cream to persuade them to continue, but continue we did. Around the corner to Victoria Street.
It's a beautifully colorful, curved street of eclectic shops that supposedly inspired Diagon Alley. It does give a magical vibe!
The boys were not acclimated to the amount of walking there is in a city, especially with all the hills and stairs of Old Town. Even with using the bus whenever we could, the bus simply can't operate around all those narrow Old Town closes. So we ended up doing even more walking after that to get over to the new town. We paused at the Scott Monument to rest and admire.
Just to be clear, it's a monument for Sir Walter Scott, not to the Scottish people in general. Next we walked up the street toward St. Andrew's square where we ignored the large monument in favor of a smaller, marmalade loving monument of a different kind.
A wiser woman would have stopped right there. The kids were happy to have met Paddington Bear, and they were decidedly tired. But it took another couple blocks before we aborted our New Town walk plans.
We did stroll down George's Street (which amused our little George to no end)
And we made our way to the National Gallery. The kids absolutely vetoed the idea of going into an art museum.
Instead we strolled through Prince's Street Gardens. The park is at a lower level than either the Old Town or the New Town and rather marks the split between the two. That's because it used to be a small lake, one where many a "witch" was drowned. When the New Town was built, the lake was drained. Now the old lake bed is 50% park, and 50% Waverly train station. The two halves of historic Edinburgh are still connected with bridges and the mighty castle rock looks down on all of it.
It was at the far end of the park that we found a playground and an ice cream stand. The children were rewarded for their efforts in walking all over the city with a tasty treat and some play time. Lee and I were rewarded with a sit down. But I noticed another church right by the end of the park, so I wandered through the kirkyard. It's quite a beautiful spot, I'm surprised it doesn't get more visitors.
It also provided a good shortcut to a useful bus stop, so when it was time to go we gathered up our herd and herded them out that way through the kirkyard. We made out way back to our little suite of rooms right on the border between old town and new. A fun little spot right near where we stayed is the Sherlock Holmes statue. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle called Edinburgh home and is remembered here.
I knew our Edinburgh days were going to be packed and busy and crazy. After dinner maybe the sane thing would have been to just relax. But I wasn't sane and couldn't relax. I dragged us onto the bus and we headed to Dean Village on the Waters of Leith.
There is a really nice walkway/bike path along the little river and a beautiful little neighborhood tucked down along the river. There used to be a number of mills here on the river, now they're all gone, but the cute little homes of the mill workers are still here and absolutely picture perfect.
It was gorgeous and green and quiet... well, except us. Our kids were absolutely disturbing the peace of everyone else visiting. Between touching spikey plants, tripping on slipper rocks, and generally being tired, Arthur was an absolute menace.
A wiser woman would have turned around, called it off, but we persevered for much longer than probably necessary with hindsight. Regardless, we did take a walk along the beautiful Waters of Leith, we did see a great heron and sweet baby ducklings, and we did learn that--like in Arizona--all the plants in Scotland want to stab you.
Our time in Edinburgh was over, but our Scottish adventures were only just begun.
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