Alan H and the Luminous Joan in Scotland- let the photo onslaught begin! Days 1-2

[Alan H]

Day One and Two- Edinburgh

I'm not going to show you pictures of castles and palaces, you can go see lovely photographs of those things all over the internet. Instead, I'm going to show you a few things that I really, really enjoyed, personally In Edinburgh. So in a way this is "Alan's Edinburgh" or more accurately "Alans Royal Mile" with a jaunt into Holyrood Park. There's a LOT more to Edinburgh than the Old City, but that's where we spent all our time.

With all the fuss and bother about the Castle and King James the umpty-umpth, I think what gets forgotten a lot is that regular people, tens of thousands of them, lived in Edinburgh for hundreds of years. Many of them did amazing things. Many lived dirty lives in filth and died unknown. A city, incredibly cramped, grew up within the walls, and then spread out beyond them. What is now the lovely Princes Street Garden was a 60 foot deep loch which served as both sewer and community water supply for several hundred years. Buildings grew up and up and up, six, eight stories tall with tiny alleyways between them, and much of that warren of buildings, closes and winds still exists. I found things there, and in graveyards, that I found to be moving and wonderful.

And I found some fun things, too, that I think you will enjoy. After all, this IS X Marks the Scot!

All right, so I will show you just a couple of Big Public Monuments to get us started. Here is the Victorian Era monument to Sir Walter Scott. It's right across the street from the bus stop that we used, and one block down from Sainsbury's the big downtown grocery market.



Joan and I have never been in real European cathedrals before. I've been in Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, but I've always found that to be cold and uninviting. NOT SO with Saint Giles in Edinburgh! The place was beautiful and very, very human. I LOVED it. Of all the decorations and carvings and wonderful stonework, what took my breath away the most was the ceiling of the absolutely magical "Thistle Chapel".



Here's the ceiling of the Thistle Chapel.



Well, you know what? That's enough of the Big STuff. I'm leaving the Castle and Holyrood and the Scottish Parliament Building…..and mind you, they're all wonderful, to photographers better than I. Come with me now and see what I found magical about Old Town Edinburgh.