UK 3: The Many Castles of Scotland

Today was a day of castles, and only castles.  Well, technically one is a palace, but I'm going to call it a castle anyway.  We ate breakfast and then immediately set out for Edinburgh Castle.

Edinburgh Castle looked a lot larger from the outside, but this is likely because there were quite a few restricted areas.  There were many museums inside the castle, but I'm more interested in seeing and exploring castles.  We did a quick walkthrough of the museums, including a glance at the royal crown and sword, and enjoyed what views we could find.

This hall had the original roof in tact

This was a cemetery for Edinburgh Castle's dogs

The entrance to the upper levels of the castle

Arthur's Seat is the on this mountain, which we plan to walk up

We walked straight from Edinburgh Castle to the train station, and left for Linlithgow.  The ride was about twenty minutes to the small town of Linlithgow.  The streets had many medieval architectural features.  We walked past a pub that was converted from an old post office.  After about ten minutes, we arrived at Linlithgow Palace.



I had read that this palace was more run down than Edinburgh, and they were right.  However, there were only a few people around and you were able to explore at leisure, its many nooks and crannies.  We absolutely loved it.  There were underground compartments where the kitchen and wells were, and you were able to climb one of its four corner towers all the way to the top.  I got pretty close to the top, but skipped the very highest point.

I timed this shot in order to catch the dripping water.  Jeremy informed me that it looked like a tear in the wall.  It is not! 

Luckily, Linlithgow was right on the way to our next destination, Sterling, which was another thirty minutes away.  While on the train, we passed Falkirk.  Both of these names were familiar to me from Braveheart.  Mel Gibson's reputation is ruined it my eyes, which is a shame since Braveheart was my favorite non comedy movie growing up.  I enjoyed it so much that I memorized four speeches from the movie to perform as an assignment for my Drama class in my sophomore year of high school.

I looked it up, and apparently none of the castles in the movie were actually from Scotland.  Ireland offered more incentives and breaks to Hollywood at the time, so they used castles from there.  Sterling was featured in the movie, so this castle was the castle that should have been used!



Sterling Castle had one small museum and two buildings that we could walk around, including bedchambers, a throne room, and a main hall.  The real highlights, however, were to be found in the views along the castle walls, many of which you could walk.  On one side, we were able to see the William Wallace monument, a tower, in the distance.



This next shot was of a cemetery just beside one of the castle walls.  When viewing the picture on my computer, I immediately recognized a pattern that I had not seen while taking it.  Highlight the caption area to reveal what I saw.

The Star Trek insignia

On one such wall, we found information on the bird man of Sterling, which I had not heard of.  It was an interesting read.  I'm including a second picture with the alchemist ingredients that he chose to use.



In the room near the bedchambers was a room that they dedicated to a large model of, I assume Sterling, done via Lego.  The lighting made taking good pictures fairly difficult to me.



We stopped at a pub in town, named No. 2 Baker Street, and had a fantastic dinner, before jumping on the train back to Edinburgh.

Near the center of town as we looked for a pub for dinner

UK 2: Out of London and into Edinburgh

I hadn't been able to make a post until tonight.  I had written my first post two nights ago but the internet was too slow to upload the pictures.

Yesterday, we woke up early for a Harry Potter locations tour around London.  I'm not a Harry Potter fan, but Stephanie is, and Miles likes the movies as well.We started out near the London Bridge, took the subway in the middle, and ended near Leicester.  He was a pleasant fellow with a ridiculously loud, and likely exaggerated, belly laugh.  He dispensed Harry potter trivia, showed us locations with film photos for comparison, and showed us around a bit of London.  It lasted two and a half hours.

An odd looking building that I saw during the Harry Potter tour and again at the Tower of London, later in the day

A cool building that I kept seeing, while on the Harry Potter tour

We ate at a nearby pub, The Bear and the Staff, which I had a taken a picture of the night before.  We left at nearly three o'clock for the Tower of London, which Stephanie had rushed through when she had gone once before, during her study abroad program.

The Tower of London is a castle in the middle of London.  It is definitely large, but other than that, I was completely unimpressed.  We had to wait in lines at multiple points, in order to continue walking around the ramparts.  I much prefer the more intimate experiences I had with castles like Gravensteen in Ghent, or a castle with more to see, such as Carcassonne.  One really neat part of the experience, however, were two ravens who were perched around the wall, which were very socialized around humans.



Our sleeper train would not be boarding until ten at night, and there aren't many kid friendly things to do to keep occupied in a cold London night that isn't a Friday(Fridays have alternating museums open late).  We decided to visit King's Cross Train Station, for its Harry Potter "Platform 9 3/4" and gift shop.  The platform had a massive line, and the shop, a shorter line.  The inside of the station itself was incredible.



The sleeper train arrived nearly an hour late, so we couldn't board until 11.  We had two adjoining rooms, linked by a door that we kept open.  There were bunk beds in both rooms.  Our bathroom was down the hall, which was disappointing because we had our own bathroom in our room when we took the auto train down from Washington, DC to Orlando, when Miles and I moved back down to Florida in 2014.  We went straight to sleep.

We had to be off the train by 8:00.  We got off at 8:10.  We all slept well, but were still exhausted.  I hadn't taken a nap during the previously day, which I've needed lately due to my semi cold.  I've just been way more wiped out that normal, which combined with the walking involved in these trips, has been difficult.

We walked a brief distance to our hotel, located right on the Royal Mile, a short walk from Edinburgh Castle.  Our hotel room is the nicest room I've ever had.  I will be sure to take a picture in the morning.  It has two floors, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen table, and even our own washer and dryer.  Since I do not have that picture now, I will instead show a picture of the church that greets us a few steps outside of the hotel.



After eating breakfast, we went to our hotel, and after a little while of sleeping on their couches, they had our room ready early for us.  We slept way too long, and didn't get ready to leave until 2:30 PM.  My semi cold strikes again.  I went online to look at the hours for Edinburgh Castle.  It advertised an explorer pass that gave access to multiple castles for a discounted price.  For just a few more dollars than Edinburgh Castle, we could see three other ones that we are planning to visit.  We walked over to the castle and picked up our pass.



We decided to walk to a nearby part of Edinburgh, named Dean Village.  While walking down from Edinburgh Castle, we caught a view of The Scott Monument, made in the honor of writer Sir Walter Scott.  Right near it was a small set of carnival rides, likely brought in for the holidays, that was still up.  This created an interesting juxtaposition that I had to capture on camera.



On our way to Dean Village we caught a nice side glance at the castle and then quite a bit later, down the street was a cathedral that looked just a little bit like the Magic Kingdom castle.



From here, we walked along the river, The Water of Leith,  towards another town, Stockbridge.  The walk was pleasant, but only the view near Dean village lived up to its reputation.



It was quite dark at this point, so we headed back to the Royal Mile and ate at a local pub, which had incredible food.  Right around the corner was a tower named Camera Obscura and World of Illusions. 

We will have to go back to view their show that was included with our ticket, but everything else was open.  We started on the sixth floor, which offered some incredible views of the city.



We walked our way down, going through room of room of illusions and all kinds of tricks of the eye.  There was even a mirror maze and a spiraling tunnel, which we've been seeing a lot of these days.  The place was incredibly varied and quite large.  Miles and Stephanie had a ball.



Edinburgh, while sprawling quite far from the old city center, is much more interesting to me than London was.  I honestly couldn't wait to get out of London.  I much prefer the feel and look of Edinburgh.