Edinburgh - Spring Break 2017

When we're on vacation we take things easy and don't plan more than one or two things for each day.  That way we have time to sleep in if we want to or to just relax at the hotel pool or even to explore and see something we weren't planning on at all. Monday the plan was to go to Edinburgh to visit the castle and walk along the Royal Mile. While I'm positive there's much more to see than those two things, we were sticking with our vacation philosophy of not trying to pack too much into one day.


Jared outside the Scottish National War Memorial


Okay, in no particular order, things we liked about the castle:

  • English Heritage members receive half price admission. The regular admission of £17 per person adds up quickly when you're traveling with a family. 
  • The views of the city were amazing. The castle sits on top of a steep slope and there were breathtaking views from every side.
  • The Crown Jewels of Scotland and the Stone of Destiny are kept in the castle. The exhibition tracing the history of these objects was really interesting.
  • The Royal Scots Dragoon Regimental Museum. For the first time in the history of ever, Jared wanted to spend more time in a museum than I did. Finally, I'm not the one reading every display while the rest of the family stands around feeling bored!
  • Looking up family names in the books inside the Scottish National War Memorial. On the inside, the building looks a little like a small cathedral. There are with books lining the walls that list the names of those who lost their lives in the first and second World Wars and subsequent conflicts. 
  • Sharing a tin of shortbread we bought at the gift shop because we were all starving but we didn't want to miss the firing of the one o'clock gun. The shortbread was delicious, the firing of the gun was kind of lame. Not nearly as big of a boom as we were expecting!

A lovely wee side street off the Royal Mile
We walked out of the castle and started down the Royal Mile. JK Rowling wrote the first of the Harry Potter books at a coffee shop here. You can see how the cobblestone streets and little shops might have inspired Hogsmeade. We stopped in one store (a woolen mill, one of many woolen mills we'd visit this week) that just kept going. It looked small at first, but like the Tardis, it was bigger on the inside. Okay, that's enough geeky references for one paragraph! Anyway, this store was huge and every place we looked there was another set of stairs leading somewhere new. It was easy to get a bit turned around and lost. We figured out which clans we belong to and what their corresponding tartans are and Abigail even took a brief lesson in playing the bagpipes.

I was captivated by these tartans, Natalie (you can just see her head in the top of the frame) is watching the fabric being woven in the ACTUAL WORKING MILL below her. 
If we were to rank the places we went while in Scotland and pick a favorite, Edinburgh would probably be at the bottom of the list for most of us. Not a great start to our week and maybe we should have branched out beyond the castle - it is only #7 on Trip Advisor's list of things to do in Edinburgh. I'm thinking we would have enjoyed the National Museum of Scotland or Holyrood Palace more. But you can't go to Edinburgh and not go to the castle, right?
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