Our final full day in Edinburgh and what a day it was.
We decided we should hit the streets early to get the most of our 24 hour Hop-On-Hop-Off ticket. This would allow us to ride in casual style to the stop closest to the castle which was our first destination for the day.
The Edinburgh castle stands on top of a giant cliff of volcanic rock and for the last 4 weeks it was the location of the Military Tattoo. Today, it was he location for thousands of fire works to be lined up which would be set off this evening to celebrate the end of the Edinburgh International festival. We took part in a guided tour which took us through the min grounds and introduced us to the locations we should explore further on our own.
I will be the first to admit I am not into history. Sure, I can appreciate some things, but then it just begins to run together for me and it all sounds the same. So needless to say, the castle was beautiful but you can only show me so many rooms and expect me to pay attention and actually gather something from it.
So I'll keep this castle component short and sweet. We saw the castle, in all its glory, on an exceptionally windy day. We rode cannons, saw the family jewels, saw where the kept prisoners of war (which was not so bad relatively speaking- local men had it worse if they were brought back to the base), and so on.
But 2 hours later, we saw all there was too see and we were sufficiently frozen so we headed to the only logical place where one should warm up- a pub. We then strolled on down back home for a little cat nap so that we could rest up for the big show this evening. As mentioned earlier, the official end of the festival was today and to celebrate there is a huge party. We are talking shut down the whole central park (the North Loch/ Princes Park), shut down tons of roads, hire tons of security and bring in all the local police, sell tickets to the park and so on. Then, the official end of the festival is marked by a one hour show of fire works played in tune to a world renowned orchestra.
So after our cat nap, we bundled up, and headed to the North Street Bridge, found a lovely restaurant serving delicious pizza and then walked into the city center to scout out the best location to view the fireworks from. Eventually it was decided that the best place to go would be back to the North Bridge so we turned around from where we were and started heading back against the crowd like a fish swimming up stream. Luckily, we found a great viewing place beside an older gentleman carrying a portable radio which was broadcasting the pieces the orchestra was playing so we could watching the fireworks as they were meant to be seen- in tune to the music.
It was lovely. A great show, and unfortunately they just did not have the best weather for such a show. So after 2 ten minute long pieces we decided we would head back, having experienced some of the show and would try and watch the rest of the fireworks from our room, accompanied by the comfort of a blanket and furnace.
But then disaster. Yes, disaster. We went to go look at all the pictures we took while at the castle and THEY WERE ALL GONE. Luckily, I am a magician and after paying a pretty penny for a recovery system online, we were able to recover the lost photos from the day and also all the photos we had taken since 2011. So here I am now, filtering through hundreds of photos from the last few years looking for the couple dozen we took today... sigh.
Fun fact- tried sticky toffee pudding for the first time yesterday and it was divine. I spent all day today looking for another place to have it, but it seems like when you look very hard for something, you can never find it. Maybe I will casually stumble across it tomorrow.
PS- photos don't seem to be loading... so no photos today!
We decided we should hit the streets early to get the most of our 24 hour Hop-On-Hop-Off ticket. This would allow us to ride in casual style to the stop closest to the castle which was our first destination for the day.
The Edinburgh castle stands on top of a giant cliff of volcanic rock and for the last 4 weeks it was the location of the Military Tattoo. Today, it was he location for thousands of fire works to be lined up which would be set off this evening to celebrate the end of the Edinburgh International festival. We took part in a guided tour which took us through the min grounds and introduced us to the locations we should explore further on our own. I will be the first to admit I am not into history. Sure, I can appreciate some things, but then it just begins to run together for me and it all sounds the same. So needless to say, the castle was beautiful but you can only show me so many rooms and expect me to pay attention and actually gather something from it.
So I'll keep this castle component short and sweet. We saw the castle, in all its glory, on an exceptionally windy day. We rode cannons, saw the family jewels, saw where the kept prisoners of war (which was not so bad relatively speaking- local men had it worse if they were brought back to the base), and so on.But 2 hours later, we saw all there was too see and we were sufficiently frozen so we headed to the only logical place where one should warm up- a pub. We then strolled on down back home for a little cat nap so that we could rest up for the big show this evening. As mentioned earlier, the official end of the festival was today and to celebrate there is a huge party. We are talking shut down the whole central park (the North Loch/ Princes Park), shut down tons of roads, hire tons of security and bring in all the local police, sell tickets to the park and so on. Then, the official end of the festival is marked by a one hour show of fire works played in tune to a world renowned orchestra.
So after our cat nap, we bundled up, and headed to the North Street Bridge, found a lovely restaurant serving delicious pizza and then walked into the city center to scout out the best location to view the fireworks from. Eventually it was decided that the best place to go would be back to the North Bridge so we turned around from where we were and started heading back against the crowd like a fish swimming up stream. Luckily, we found a great viewing place beside an older gentleman carrying a portable radio which was broadcasting the pieces the orchestra was playing so we could watching the fireworks as they were meant to be seen- in tune to the music.
It was lovely. A great show, and unfortunately they just did not have the best weather for such a show. So after 2 ten minute long pieces we decided we would head back, having experienced some of the show and would try and watch the rest of the fireworks from our room, accompanied by the comfort of a blanket and furnace.
But then disaster. Yes, disaster. We went to go look at all the pictures we took while at the castle and THEY WERE ALL GONE. Luckily, I am a magician and after paying a pretty penny for a recovery system online, we were able to recover the lost photos from the day and also all the photos we had taken since 2011. So here I am now, filtering through hundreds of photos from the last few years looking for the couple dozen we took today... sigh.
Fun fact- tried sticky toffee pudding for the first time yesterday and it was divine. I spent all day today looking for another place to have it, but it seems like when you look very hard for something, you can never find it. Maybe I will casually stumble across it tomorrow.
PS- photos don't seem to be loading... so no photos today!
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