Inconceivable!
A view of the same garden from the back - pretty tricky disguising the wall!
Emily on top of the Salisbury Crags looking over Edinburgh
Cary in front of Adam Smith's grave....this picture is particularly for Les and Richard.
The inside of Canongate Church...so much blue.
The kitchen of the Georgian House (a pic from the web since we couldn't take pictures inside).
A picture of the last room added to Gladstone's land - same deal as above with the picture.
The inner courtyard of Holyroodhouse
Wow! What a day. Sadly our time in Edinburgh is complete – except one more excellent breakfast tomorrow morning. We had five items on our agenda today and we were able to complete all of them before dinner. We started the morning by riding the Lothian bus #30 all the way to the end of Princes Street and went into the New Town. We went to one of the original squares on the end of the New Town – Charlotte Square. There, next to the new First Minister’s House (Scottish version of Prime Minister) we visited the Georgian House. All of the houses in the New Town are from the Georgian era, as that was when the New Town was built. For us in the States, that era is known as the Federalist period. The basement and first two floors were refurbished to resemble what they would have looked like for the house's first residents. It was complete with the “upstairs/downstairs” designations. It helped me to think that I was looking at a house that was somewhat contemporary to Mount Vernon. It was also interesting to note how the Edinburghers got around some of the taxes that the pesky colonists were so up in a roar about. For example, you only get one wine glass and you rinse it out between courses because there was such a heavy tax on glass. It was also interesting to note how much lead there was in the environment. Even the tea was kept in a lead-lined drawer! No wonder they couldn’t make it past 40! We were also keen to note how they tended to live beyond their means in order to have what everyone else did and to impress their neighbors. Guess some things never change.
After seeing all that Georgian life had to offer a gentleman and his family, we walked down George Street and then cut back across Princes Street Gardens to the Royal Mile. Here we visited Gladstone’s Land. This was essentially the same type of museum, but instead of Georgian, it was from the 16th and 17th Century with some modern additions added in the 18th Century before the New Town was built. Mr. Gladstone was a merchant who owned the entire building, but lived in the two, then three, then four room apartment on the second floor (he kept adding to the building - both for his own living space - and the extra revenue). He was of the class of gentlemen that moved to the New Town when it was built. It was interesting to see how, at this point, due to space, the masters and servants lived more or less among each other – and every room had more than one purpose. The bedroom and living room were the same space due to the fireplace – a far cry from the digs in Charlotte Square! Seeing both museums back to back was really interesting because it allowed us to compare the evolution. Gladstone’s land also gave us a peak at what it was like for all the other tenants of the building – very cramped is the answer. There were four floors in this particular building, but some of them had as many as 12 floors, with front tenements and a matching set in the back for a total of 24 families in a very small space. As time moved on, the larger spaces were subdivided continuously so that by the 20th Century you could have a family of 10 or 12 in one room. We saw some pictures and re-creations of this at our next stop – The People’s Story.
On our way there, however, we ran into a huge crowd at St. Giles. We found out when we got back to the B&B that there was a service for fallen men in Afghanistan and among the soldiers present was Lieutenant Wales (better known as HRH Prince Harry). We figured there must have been someone there – but we figured we wouldn’t be able to see whoever it was due to the crowd, so we moved on. On the TV, you could see he was wearing the same uniform as his fellow soldiers, so it would have been nearly impossible to pick him out in a crowd. Anyway, the People’s Story was a museum dedicated to the proletariat. Dad would have been proud as I went through and read about the slums and conditions that ordinary, hard-working Edinburghers lived in all the way up until the 1980s or so, when they condemned a lot of buildings and refurbished all over the place and displaced them all creating a lot of homelessness. We did see a picture of a family of 12 that lived in one room in 1968. We also saw a lot of recreations and pictures of apartments and tenements and washing houses from throughout the 20th Century. There were a lot of first person narratives and quotes and it was really interesting. One woman remembered being a child and thinking they were in a palace when they moved into a new flat and she and her sister got a room together that they didn’t have to share with anyone else. Ironically, the Canongate Kirk is next door to the museum, and in their churchyard, in a tomb that is literally against the building housing the People’s Story is the grave of Adam Smith. I took a picture of it for Dad – I know that Adam Smith is his hero! We decided to add the church to our agenda of places to see since we were so close and it was a nice surprise. It is the official church of Holyrood – so it has a Royal Pew – even though it is now part of the Church of Scotland, not the Church of England. The last official visit by the monarch was 1 July 2007 – one of our favorite dates! We took some pictures of the inside, knowing that Mom would love it because the entire inside of the church is light blue.
Speaking of Holyrood, after we had a nice lunch (and hid from a short sprinkle outside) we went to visit Holyrood Palace – the official residence of Her Majesty, The Queen in Edinburgh. We went on the advice of Anna and Frank who told us if you have the chance to go into a royal residence, you need to go to see the difference between “wealth” and “royalty”. It was definitely awesome. It was built by James II of Scotland on the remains of the old Holyrood Abbey, which is in ruins adjacent to the palace. We saw many rooms, many of which were added and enriched by Charles II of England and patterned after Versailles (though without all the gold leaf and mirrors). We didn’t get to see Queen Elizabeth’s Royal Apartments, but we did get to visit the apartments of Mary, Queen of Scots and her husband. Again, it was really hard to comprehend – I am standing in the bedroom of Mary, Queen of Scots. She stood right here! – inconceivable (you keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means). On our way out to the Abbey and gardens we went down and around what seemed like three different staircases. It was easy to see how people could sneak around and hide in these old palaces. Once outside we visited the Abbey ruins, with burials from the 16th Century and before (but we couldn’t make those out) and then we went into the gardens. I took about a hundred pictures for the aunts and moms. They were amazing. Everywhere you turned you felt like you were looking at a the box-top from a puzzle. Interestingly enough, when we came around the outside the palace to climb up the Salisbury Crags (our last appointment of the day) we noticed how they terraced the gardens on the inside of the wall so that it looked like a hill that connected with the hills in the background so the Royal Family doesn’t see a wall – Disney has nothing on these people!
As I was saying, we then hiked up the Salisbury Crags and looked out over the city. The views were incredible – as was the wind. The place where we came down was not too far from our B&B so we walked home to rest before dinner. We accomplished all this between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. – we were beat. And we realized that we had walked all the way from New Town to our B&B – the long way, and UP a crag, so we figure we made up for all the bus riding we’ve been doing here. After a short nap, we went to dinner at the Crags – a pub up the street we visited our first night here, and had some good pub grub (more like Brown Lantern food than “British” though) and watched Greece v Spain in the Euro 2008 tournament that is going on currently. Neither Scotland nor England qualified this year, though, so no one was too rowdy about the game. Anyway, we’ve gladly settled in for an early night. We’re going to get packed in the morning and find our way to Manchester to finally meet Andy and Sue. We are sad to leave Scotland, but we are very excited about Wales. Manchester here we come!
Cheers for now! -Cary
Comments
Did I read that you are climbing Mt. Snowden with Andy? Wear your super-duper fast-walking shoes!
Love ya,
Margaret