Edinburgh, Scotland – not enough time to experience all the history, but still great!

Tuesday 7/6/2010 - Saturday 7/10/2010.

In Edinburgh, we stayed at the Princes Street Suite, and this was by far our best accommodations with 2 separate bedrooms, a large living room/dining room combination, full kitchen with dishes, and laundry in the apartment! (None of our previous housing situations had laundry, and we had been washing our clothes in the sink and hanging them to dry in the humid European climate, as when we asked where Laundromats were, we were referred to dry cleaners who would do a shirt for 4 pounds – one pound was about $1.50). Each bedroom had a small flat screen television, and there was a large, flat screen TV in the living room (and the TV shows were in English!, including many American TV shows and movies). They also provided an iPod docking station, which the boys really liked.

We started out the visit in Edinburgh with a guided, double-decker tour bus of Old Town and New Town, to get oriented to the city and get a narration from a guide about things to see. (Sometimes we got very entertaining guides, and sometimes they were very dry and flat). We could hop on and off the bus, so we got off at the Edinburgh Castle to tour that, walking through the marching area where the famous Military Tattoo is held the full month of August every year (this is a bag pipes and drums competition - I suggest you hit YouTube and look up videos of these talented musicians). There was endless shopping to be done, and we supported their economy with our small donations (but I did not buy a kilt – too expensive).

The famous Edinburgh Castle, built on the rock of an extinct volcanic plug for visibility and protection, was at one end of the “Royal Mile”, and at the other end of the Royal Mile was the British Royal Palace and the Scottish Parliament. (The original Parliament of Scotland for the Kingdom of Scotland during the 13th century was ended for 300 years by the “Acts of Union” of 1707, and England ruled Scotland from the Parliament of the United Kingdom in London until just recently, when in 1999 the Scottish Parliament began again). The Queen of England still visits here regularly, and she was overdue for her spring visit.

Edinburgh seemed older than London, and/or what it could be was the presentation and maintenance of the buildings, or maybe the origin of the stones (granite vs. sandstone). The old stones of Edinburgh seem to have been allowed to age more naturally, as they were very dark and rough, while the stonework of London was lighter in color, and they were very clean and smooth.

On Thur. 7/8/2010, we rode for 12 hours on a tour bus to the mountainous Highlands north of Edinburgh to Inverness and back. We saw beautiful countryside, and if there are such things as genetic or “DNA memories”, I can see why my father and mother choose to live in western Montana as their final home after retirement. The land of the Scottish Highlands is a lot like the mountains of western Montana and in Idaho (where I currently live).

We stopped and visited the ruined Urquhart Castle on the shores of the famous Loch Ness (“Loch” means “lake). We took a boat ride from this castle to the end of the lake, where the tour bus picked us up again, drove through Inverness, and then back to Edinburgh. (Of course, we saw Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, but my camera wasn’t working for some reason).

Edinburgh is in the "lowlands" (rolling hills), and up north is the "highlands". Mountain peaks up there are not that high (the highest being Ben Nevis at 4409 ft. above sea level, and we would have seen this highest peak in the United Kingdom except for cloud cover on the day of this trip). We drove past ski areas, which closed about 3 weeks ago (but I did not see large enough snow fields to ski on right now). We saw where the Campbells attacked and killed hundreds the MacDonalds in their sleep (How does that saying go? “Never trust a Campbell”?). We saw where portions of the Harry Potter movies were made. It was beautiful country, again, looking like what you might find in western Montana and places in Idaho.

Loch Ness is connected by a chain of lakes and man-made canals and locks, which connects the Firth of Lorn and the Sea of Herbides and the Atlantic Ocean near Northern Ireland on the west coast of Scotland to the North Sea on the east coast of Scotland.

Scotland was beautiful, and it really tugged at my heartstrings. (See my next chapter “The Dream of Standing in the Homelands of My Ancestors”).

Todd