Day 5: Engines of History

June 25, 2014

Museums don't open until 10:00 am, or at the very earliest 9:30, so we started off the day with a stroll down to the new town, where we found the Conan Doyle pub across the street from the writer's former residence.

In front of the house, there was a statue of the great detective himself, no doubt contemplating some interesting clue.  

After strolling and admiring the Georgian architecture, we headed for the National Museum of Scotland.  The building was fabulous:

We wandered around for some time.  We'd especially wanted to see a special exhibition on the invention of logarithms, which turned out to be off the main gallery.  Although the museum has some splendid general interest areas, we concentrated on the parts to do with Scotland.  We fell into conversation with one of the museum demonstrators and in addition to seeing a mill steam engine demonstrated, he also started up their Newcomen atmospheric engine for us.  (They don't actually run steam in the museum, they cycle the machinery using a modern system- I'm sure the museum's insurance company insists!)

From there we did some additional walking, strolling out past the University of Edinburgh and through The Meadows.  

As it got later, we turned back and found more music, this time in The Captain's Bar, which someone had told us about in the pub the night before.  We found ourselves singing along with some humorous Canadian songs, played by a fellow who turned out to be Grant Simpson, fiddler for the Scottish group North Sea Gas.  We had another delightful musical evening to finish our last day in Edinburgh. And now I really want to see North Sea Gas play as a group on their next American tour!  

Day 4: Edinburgh

June 24, 2014

The next morning, there was a slight drizzle on the streets, and the air was cool and damp.

We weren't about to let that discourage us, however, so we set out with umbrellas for Edinburgh Castle. We took the tour, then walked around the various buildings, taking the indoor areas first to get out of the wet.  The Great Hall was fabulous.  As were the Scottish crown jewels, but we weren't allowed to take pictures in there.

As the morning went on, the weather began to clear in fits and starts.  There were originally a lot more photos, but later in the afternoon I discovered that my camera was malfunctioning- the light meter had died and I had taken a number of photos of blank white rectangles.  Nearly all the photos you'll see from here on were taken by my husband with his cellphone.  But we didn't figure that out until after we left the castle, so there aren't as many of the castle as I would have liked.

As the weather cleared, the views from the castle were spectacular.

After lunch, with the weather clearing considerably, we set out for Arthur's Seat in Holyrood Park, a promontory overlooking the city.  As we climbed higher, the views got ever more striking.

We took a different route down, sensibly taking a longer path rather than a straight scramble down the rocks.  We observed other, less cautious hikers, having some difficulty descending.

After strolling back into the city, we found some dinner and headed up to Sandy Bell's, a pub with reputation as a music venue,  to hear a music session.  We love Scottish music, and really enjoyed the evening.  We walked back to the hotel relaxed and with fiddle music playing in our heads.

Day 3: Heading North

June 23, 2014

Our friends dropped us at the train station the next morning to resume our journey north.  Thanks to the magic of rail-passes, we could stop and start as much as we liked, so we stopped in Newcastle and had a lovely walk.  Newcastle hasn't quite got the hang of exploiting their waterfront yet, but a pleasant riverwalk and a scattering of restaurants suggest it's catching on.

The views of bridges on the Tyne are fabulous.  I was quite struck by the modern pedestrian bridge, the Gateshead Millenium Bridge.

Views from further up the river were great as well.

We walked around and found a lovely covered arcade:

We visited the Castle Keep, where JT got a rare picture of me (usually I'm the one behind the camera).

The keep had a splendid great hall, which rang with echoes of the shrieks of schoolchildren.  We climbed up to the tower for a view of the city:

We were charmed by a memorial to a street musician and fiddler.

We also admired Robert Stephenson's mid-nineteenth century bridge- a two story bridge which still carries rail traffic on the upper level and motor and pedestrian traffic on the lower.

After a satisfying lunch, we hopped back on a train and went the rest of the way to Edinburgh.   It's a lovely city, with a satisfyingly cohesive style.

We checked into our hotel, dropped luggage, and enjoyed some more walking while we got our bearings.

We located Edinburgh Castle-an imposing pile.

And were delighted to find that bagpipers fairly littered the streets.  We stopped for a bit and listened to this duo who were giving a street concert. (They're on YouTube if you'd like to see them too.)

We admired the famous flower clock.

And I had to take some rose pictures for Valerie, they were too pretty!

We stopped by a pub that was reputed to have music, but nothing seemed to be happening, so we got some dinner and then I returned to the hotel, as I was pooped.   Jonathan did a little more walking, taking advantage of the late sunsets so far north and eventually did find some music.   Here's Castle Mile, at after 10 pm.  And here was where we planned to start our day on the morrow.