Here is part of the walk. Though the wind blew a little, we had wonderful cool weather and enjoyed an extremely comfortable day. As you can see, we were joined by many other Saturday tourists but it wasn't too crowded to be enjoyable.
We managed to easily avoid all the tourist traps (though we were both enticed like small children by most of them!) We had such a good time just ambling down the hill, taking in the sights, and admiring the various things on the way.
We saw a "clans of Scotland" shop and I was tempted to buy things that were branded "Brady". I settled on a picture of the brochure rack. Besides, I'm pretty sure that my family's version of Brady is Irish, not Scottish.
We saw a real police box, but I'm pretty sure it was not functioning and they only keep it for the people like us who watch Doctor Who and come touring and go "OMG a police box!"
In Scotland, Taxis are sponsored by really good Whisky (as opposed to the kinds of Taxis you see in Vegas....)
We saw a street performer dressed in costume playing the bagpipes. Even though we knew that he was just playing into the hands of the tourists, we were glad that we didn't go all the way to Scotland without seeing a man in a kilt playing the bagpipes.
The one place we did stop into was St. Giles' Cathedral. Entrance was free but we paid 2 pounds for a picture license. It's hard to be sneaky with our camera and it was the first reasonable "come free but donate if you take pictures" deal we'd come across in our touring so we gladly paid for our camera sticker.
It's so hard to capture the scope of these amazing buildings on camera, but I think mark got pretty close here. This is the main entrance to the church.
Unlike most of the churches we had previously seen in England, this one had a mixture of wood and stone construction. The characteristic arches, stained glass, and amazing detail were the same though.
This is a good idea of what it looked and felt like in the church, except it was a bit brighter inside.
This church had an amazing pipe organ. This one was modern (built in the 1990s?) and had little windows into the inside so you could see its construction. I wanted to play it but then I remembered that not only do I not know how, but I probably wouldn't be allowed.
While we were touring the cathedral, a youth choir of sorts was having a dress rehearsal. They also happened to be featuring a young clarinetist on the Mozart Concerto. It's a piece I know (or knew) very well, and it was so amazing to hear it performed in a space with wonderful acoustics. The girl playing was very young, and perhaps too young in her ability to be debuting such a challenging piece, but good for her. Whoever she was, it certainly made an awesome day even more special.
Here's Mark, pointing to his clipart camera sticker and feeling pretty slick. We're down in the church's basement enjoying some homemade desserts for our afternoon snack and a bit of a rest before moving on to the next part of our day.
I don't know what I ate, but it was the best thing of the entire trip. Delish! The ladies of the church very clearly just had a little kitchen set up where they sold snacks and desserts and small meals to tourists willing to take the stairs down and ask for food. Thank you, Rick Steves, for letting us in on such a little known secret!
After snack we decided it was time to hop the double bus sight seeing tour. From atop the hop on, hop off bus with our 24 hour pass, we saw much of the city in about 45 minutes. If you have time, definitely check out our picasa albums! No, you don't need an account just to look at the pictures.
Just a smattering of some of the cool stuff we saw from the bus! And yes... those pics were all taken while the bus was in motion, I have to give a shout out to our amazing camera.
We ended our day with dinner, a bar with live music, and finally collapsed at the hotel. But like I said...
We had a really good time.
Great shots and great blog again, as per usual! I have to disagree with the "wind blew a little" comment - pretty sure I got BLOWN OVER in Edinburgh!
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