Friday, July 8
After the excitement of seeing the Queen, we wandered into the new Scottish Parliament building, and it was very impressive. There were tours of the art works in the complex and the architecture, special exhibitions, and of course a cafe and a shop on the way out.
We walked along the Royal Mile, which runs from Holyroodhouse Palace to Edinburgh Castle. With it being a sunny day there were hordes of tourists doing the same thing, and checking out all the tartan, cashmere, jewellery and other souvenir shops along the way. There were also plenty of buskers, with the pipers being our favourites.
We went in and had a look around St. Giles Cathedral, which is the main place of worship for the Church of Scotland in the city. The stained glass windows were magnificent, along with some of the smaller chapels. Nearby was a hidden gem - the Writers Museum. This was a small building which had separate rooms devoted to Scotland's 3 most famous writers - Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson. It was fascinating seeing some of the actual items used by these 3 great writers during their lifetimes, including their writing desks.
We finally reached the Castle, but unfortunately there was a big blue hoarding hiding the view of it perched upon Castle Rock. This was due to the upcoming Military Tattoo, and all the stands were set up so we could see what "the stage" looked like "in the flesh" after watching so many of the Tattoos on TV. We did get some great views, but didn't have time to do the full tour through the Castle.
We made our way back to the station and the train ride to Inverkeithing station (not far from the port) took us across the old Firth of Forth Bridge, an engineering marvel from the late 1800s. We were back on board just in time to catch the Sounds of Scotland show, which featured pipers, other musicians, dancers and singers, and it was a really good show which completed a fantastic day in Edinburgh.
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