UK 6: The final day at York

Halfway between Edinburgh and the London Airport is York.  Luckily, they have a facility to store your luggage right near the train station.  I picked York because of its location, but also because it had the longest castle walls in England, measuring at 3.4 km long.  It was one of the warmest days we'd had, and sunny.  Unfortunately, it was a cold night, and so there was some ice on the walls, and they closed it down for the day.  This was very disappointing to say the least.

Although the castle walls were long, it was not like a Carcassonne or Obidos.  It was much bigger inside, and you couldn't see the walls from most parts inside.  With the walls unavailable, we made our way to the Shambles, a very old, small road in the middle of town that is closed down to cars.



As you can see, the road is now lined with three different Harry Potter shops, back to back.  It was pretty ridiculous and definitely took away from the old, beautiful surroundings.  We ran into yet another carnival here in York, that distracted from the scenery as well.



We continued on the path towards the massive cathedral in town, called the York Minster.



The price they were charging to enter was exorbitant, and I've seen enough churches by now, so we skipped going inside.

We headed to the nearby York Museum Gardens, as I was all museumed out.  The gardens weren't huge, but they were a nice place to walk on a sunny day.  There were some church ruins here that were beautiful.



Without the walls to occupy our time, we needed to find something else to do.  York was occupied by the Vikings for a period of time, and they have a small excavation site with a small ride, so we headed over.  The first room had a see through floor, showing part of the excavation site.  The next room had us boarding a small ride that brought us through recreations of viking life in York.  It was pretty poor compared to Disney rides, and expensive as could be, but it kept us busy for a while.  As we exited the ride, there was a skeleton displayed, that they used to create one of the animatronic vikings on the ride.



Nearby was what little remained of York Castle, named Clifford's Tower.  It wasn't much to look at, especially if you pulled back your view and looked around the surroundings.  A parking lot?  Seriously?



We took the train to a hotel right inside the airport, in front of the departure gates.  The room was super tiny, but the convenience couldn't be beat.

In other news, I showed the anime tv show Steins;gate to Miles and Stephanie.  They both enjoyed it.  Near the end, something on the screen caught my eye.  We took a crappy screenshot to show what we saw.



As you can see, the building that we went to for the robot convention, in Japan, was shown in the show.  Miles and I found this to be very cool.

UK 5: The final castle, the final hill, and a few museums

Today was the only sunny day of Scotland.  It was also the coldest.  We started the day by going back to Craigmillar Castle.  I loved the way the sun was leaking through the clouds, and spent some time taking pictures from different angles around the castle.  Unfortunately, at one point I pressed something on the camera that made every picture for the rest of the day appear washed out and brighter(+.03).



The castle was open to exploration and there were very few people there.  Of note, was a family bringing a westie dog throughout the castle.  A westie is short for the west highland white terrier, a Scottish breed.  I'd not known before that it was a Scottish dog.  Anyhow, I thought it was really cool that you are allowed to bring dogs through castles here.  It seems to be more common to allow dogs places in Europe, as I recall the dogs allowed in Van Gogh's former home.  In southern Florida, you are not even allowed to bring your dogs into the county parks, which is ludicrous.

Next, we took a bus to a local sword maker, to check out their Scottish swords, which I thought Miles would get a kick out of.  Unfortunately, they are open every day during the week, but not on weekends.  Right nearby was our next stop, Calton Hill.

Calton Hill has a monument to Horatio Nelson, who also has a statue made of him, which is fetured in Trafalgar Square.  We did not climb the monument.  Instead, we walked around,admired the views, and Miles climbed the National Monument.  The National Monument was attempted to be built in honor of Scottish soldiers who died during the Napoleonic Wars.  The city ran out of funding, leading it to be called Edinburgh's Disgrace.  They've attempted to complete it in as early as 1901 and as lately as 2004.



We walked down a path of stairs that led beneath the train tracks, and back into our part of town.  We took brief stops at the People's Story Museum and the Edinburgh Museum, before going to the National Museum of Scotland.  Luckily, they were all free. 




The Edinburgh Museum had an interesting piece about how although tartan(scottish plaid) had been banned since the Jacobite Rebellion, in 1822, Sir Walter Scott encouraged Scots to wear their colors to greet the king.  This made tartan popular again.



The National Museum was very large.  Miles spent a lot of time with the interactive science exhibits.  At one point, he watched a teenager do a game involving reaction time.  It was a wall with different colored lights in different positions.  You had a certain amount of time to press the buttons as they lit up.  The teen got 35.  Miles went next.  After Miles was done, I took off my jacket, handed him my camera, and showed Miles how it was done.  I got 38.  Only the red light gave me troubles.

We briefly walked through the Scottish history section.  By the time we had reached the animal and dinosaur area, we were all a bit bored, tired, and hungry.



Around the corner was a themed Frankenstein pub that looked interesting.



The food was just ok.  Tomorrow, we head on a train early in the day to visit York, before continuing our journey to the airport hotel in London.

UK 4: How a mistake turned into a great day- The Scottish Edition

We started the day by taking a double decker bus to near Craigmillar Castle, about a twenty minute ride away from the center of town.  We were dropped off about a ten minute walk away.  The road didn't have a sidewalk, so we approached by way of the Craigmillar Castle Park.

 

We tried to find the entrance on this side of the castle, but it was blocked, so we walked all the way around to the other side.



The sign pointed to a ticket door that was closed and locked.  We walked to the front gate and it was locked too.  Google maps said that it was open.  I checked out their website and apparently, they are closed Thursdays and Fridays.  We would have to go back tomorrow.

We were about an hour's walk from the top of a nearby mountain, named Arthur's Seat.  We decided to head in that direction, stopping at the halfway point at a recommended free garden named Dr. Neil's Garden.  Of course, this is not exactly the season for gardens to bloom, but it did have bathrooms and would make a nice stop.



Nearby, we found the beginning of a path up the mountain.  After a bit of steps, we circled the mountain via a path that was popular with joggers.



This next picture was taken while circling the mountain.  If you look at the middle, you'll see two beige/grey towers.  Just above and to the left of it, in the picture, is where the Craigsmillar Castle was.



After walking for a while, we found the back path up the mountain.  It was mostly steps and brought us straight up the mountain.



Once we got to the top, it was wide open and green, with views of the summit.



I did not go the last few steps, but took a picture of the two of them near the "seat."  We then walked down the sloped other side of the mountain, to exit near the bottom of the Royal Mile.




At the start of the Royal Mile sits the Holyrood Palace.  Originally an Abbey, this Palace was built around 1501, and is now the official residence of the queen, in Scotland.



We stopped in a few shops on the way to finding a pub that had a menu to our liking.  By the time we ordered food, it was almost 5:00, a full day.  Tomorrow will be our last day in Edinburgh.