Marc's Public Blog - Trips to other locations

Days #12-14: more rain on and off. until finally, on the 14th day, UK-wide rain stopped.

We left Durham early in the morning and drove to Scotland:

We first headed out to the retired Royal Yacht Britannia, which you can enter from a shopping mall. It's the Yacht where the royal family would travel the world and "be royal" and go on vacation, with the UK taxpayer's money. Good scheme they have running... In some ways, it's not quite unlike airforce one, except much slower, and bigger of course:

onboard doctor

with so much uniform changing, because uniforms are important, a huge washing station

Nice machine room

After the boat, we drove to another Georgian House for a tour:

We then used our last few hours in the rental car and drove to Holyrood Park and hiked up to Arthur's Seat for an elevated view of the city:

the castle, and old town

never had the time to look that one up, maybe a ski slope in the winter?

We then went to drop off the car, and we walked to our B&B to drop off our luggage:

the park shortcut was scenic but not faster

We then went out for our nice dinner at Number One

Sightseeing-wise, it was kind of a short day since we only arrived in Edinburgh a bit after noon due to the longish drive.

The next morning, we started with the Palace of Holyroodhouse, where the queen stays when she's around. Sadly, no pictures in the palace:

what's left of the chapel attached to the Palace

Next, we went to the Scottish Parliament Building for a guided tour. Yes, Scotland has its own Parliament as they are given some autonomy and self rule. You can tell the parliament is recent, it's extremely well designed and with a fair system that puts broken systems like the US one to shame (with stupid things like filibusturing):

each MP gets a small pod office where tthey can work in between sessions

the parliament building has a very nice architecture, but no pictures inside

From the parliament we walked up the royal mile:

we got stopped by this in the street

oink, why don't we have an oink where we live?

A few things on the way, several churches, a museum of Edinburgh which sadly we didn't have the time to see later, and a few more things:

St. Giles Cathedral was quite nice:

National Convenant

We then ended up at the museum of scotland, a museum of everything, and that sucked the rest of the time we had that day

Since sadly this was another museum that closed as dearly as 17:00, we had another 4H of daylight left. In July/August, the whole city has a big festival with hundreds of things happening every day. I got a ticket for a student designed video game room, and then a play for an incredibly cheap price (and yet it was well acted):

this game designed on a single neopixel strip was actually brilliant

We then went to check out Camera Obscura, which had decent surrounding views from its top, and some illusions on its floors below:

Last, but not least, we headed for our play, departure lounge, which had simplistic decors, but was well acted:

The next morning, we went first thing to the Edinburgh Castle and as soon as we got in, we made a beeline for the Scottish Crown Jewels, which quickly had a 30-45mn line soon after we went (we beat everyone there and got in with no line at all). I got tickets online which while print at home ended up working fine on my phone, they scanned us and we got straight in:

line starts early

crown jewels

Nice views from the castle:

Next, we went to the national gallery (I opted to skip the portrait gallery):

The had an annex with other art :)

We then walked around town a bit to hit some waypoints Jennifer set :)

million pounds

Next was another victorian house, which honestly was a full waste of time which would have been better spent at the Edinburgh museum or the dynamic earth. Oh well...

Since everything useful was closing early again, Jennifer went to do some scotch tasting:

We then walked around town a bit, and took a bus to our anniversary dinner at The Kitchin.