Edinburgh

Edinburgh Castle looks over the city from pretty much everywhere. It sits at the top of the Royal Mile, the street that extends all the way to Holyrood Palace, where the Queen and family stay when they are in Edinburgh. It’s an amazing street to wander along; it’s lined with shops, ancient churches, narrow alleyways called ‘closes”, and many interesting people and buskers.

This bag pipe player was out near the Castle and could be heard from way down the street. People would stand by him and take photos of their families with him before (hopefully) leaving him a pound or two.

I was lucky enough to be able to get up to Scotland by train for my days off 2 weeks in a row. On the first visit I went to the Castle and joined a free tour by a lovely Scottish woman who shared many fascinating details about its history. She pointed out that not only is there a beautiful city view from the up there, but also a good view of the Regiment’s dog cemetery below.I took bus out to the Ocean Terminal to tour the Queen’s yacht, the Royal Britannia. I figured it’s my only chance to ever be aboard a yacht, and I was pretty curious to see it after watching the Crown and other things about the Royal family. Even though it was decommissioned 20+ years ago, it’s still a pretty impressive vessel.

This is the main deck that the family sitting room looks out and where the family would play games while out on long trips.

The sitting room seemed pretty small in comparison, but there are plenty of other rooms they would hang out in. The yacht has its own sick bay complete with surgery/operating room should the need arise, a mail room, and a good size laundry to deal with laundry of the a large crew and passengers- just to name a few of the many rooms on it. The Queen and Prince Phillip had bedrooms opposite each other with single beds in them; the only double bed on the yacht is in a family guest room that Charles and Diana used for their honeymoon and subsequent family visits.

This is the barge that would take the Queen and Prince to shore when they visited other countries. It has an air conditioned cabin for when they were in tropical places. It’s the nicest barge I’ve seen.

Edinburgh has so much to see, with many ancient and old buildings and plenty of green spaces too: parks, gardens and golf, croquet and bowling clubs. The city has a really nice feel to it. It’s the home of Harry Potter, evidence of which can be seen everywhere.

The city is also home to many festivals, 7 of which happen in the summer months. I was able to be there for the early days of Edinburgh Fringe Festival; it features music, theater, comedy, spoken word, exhibitions, etc all over the city and with very inexpensive entrance tickets. There were fireworks up over the Castle each night after the Royal Military Tattoo bands finished playing. I got to see a great Irish comedian, Ed Byrne, who was sold out his first night showing and was hysterically funny. I don’t think I’ve ever really seen a comedian live before. I aslo saw a one woman play called My Darling Clemmie about the life of Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine. The actress was the only person on stage for an hour and took the audience from her teen years through her marriage to the death of Winston. Amazing. Another one woman show I saw was The Ballad of Mulan, about a Chinese woman who disguised herself as a boy to serve in the Emperor’s army. The two musical acts I got to were What Girls are Made of, the story of Cora Bissett’s life as an Indie singer/musician, and Mugenkyo Drummers, a UK based women’s group that performs on the Taiko drums (traditional Japanese drums). The quality of pefomances was spectacular. There were so many different things I could have gone to see, but my brain couldn’t take any more.

Many No-Brexit signs in Edinburgh, some quite loud, others much quieter.

I can’t wait to go back to Edinburgh one day.